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Dan Glickman is Interviewed about the Proposed Defense Budget; Becca Wasser is Interviewed about the F-15 Crew Rescue. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired April 06, 2026 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:00]

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: They just inked a new deal with the players. Can you talk about that deal and how significant this is?

CARI CHAMPION, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, it is a very significant deal, and it's been a long time coming. I think that, as you know, the CBA, the collective bargaining agreement, was pushed and pushed and pushed. But now these women, the vets on the team, will average at least $1 million. Like, for instance, A'ja Wilson is the best player in the WNBA. She'll get max, which will get somewhere between $1 million and $1.4 million. They got housing. They have pensions. They're working on their retirement. They have health care. They have -- they have things that they -- basic things, quite frankly, if I'm being honest with you, Audie. These are basic things that they should have had. But because the league has just been around for 30 years, it's been taken -- it's taken a long time to get to this point. And so, now, they feel like, OK, we're at -- we're at a level playing field and revenue share was a huge deal. They were looking for at least 25 percent to 40 percent of the revenue share. They got to 20, which is great. But there's still so much more work to do.

I don't want to diminish this contract. It is amazing in itself. But these ladies understand the value. These teams, new WNBA teams, average a quarter of $1 billion. They're like, the math isn't mathing. If it takes that much money to buy a new WNBA team, can we see some of that windfall? And they're right. I mean media rights deal. And so they're looking for more money and they were able to get it.

And congratulations to the players union because they really did work very hard to do that. And obviously congratulations to the league because they understand the values that these ladies have, the value that the ladies (INAUDIBLE).

CORNISH: Yes. And congratulations to these women college students who, you know, there's a pro path for them that is -- looks far more lucrative than it used to be.

CHAMPION: And --

CORNISH: Cari, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

CHAMPION: Thank you for having me. Go UCLA. Sorry about that. Had to do it. CORNISH: Well, in the meantime, there's still more basketball to be

played. The men's national championship game. Michigan and UConn tonight, only TBS and HBO Max.

And straight ahead on CNN THIS MORNING, the Pentagon wants to line its war chest, but will Congress actually sign off?

Plus, President Trump ran on a platform of getting costs down. So will his voters stick by him if prices continue to rise due to his war.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:36:52]

CORNISH: Good morning, everyone. I'm Audie Cornish. Thank you for joining me on CNN THIS MORNING.

It's half past the hour. And here's what's happening right now.

The president has issued a new deadline for Tehran. He says they have until tomorrow to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or they will be, quote, "living in hell." Trump threatened to target key infrastructure sites, including power plants. Iran says it will only reopen the vital waterway when financial damages from the war are, quote, "fully compensated."

And missiles continue to fly overnight between Iran and Israel. Six children were among those killed in a strike overnight on Tehran. That's according to their state media. And Israeli media reports at least two people were killed and two remain missing after an Iranian strike on a residential building in Haifa on Sunday.

New satellite imagery shows a crater at the crash site of that F-15 fighter jet that was shot down over Iran. We've learned that the airman who was injured and lost during the attack hid in Iran's mountains for more than a day before being rescued on Sunday. A source tells us that -- tells CNN that hundreds of U.S. special ops, military and intelligence personnel were involved in the mission. President Trump is also set to brief the press on that operation later today.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are expressing worry about the White House's latest budget that proposes $1.5 trillion spending for defense. And that's a 40 percent increase on the budget for the Pentagon. And it comes with a 10 percent decrease in other kinds of services. That includes billions in cuts to key programs like NIH, energy assistance, HUD, NOAA and FEMA. Republican Utah Senator John Curtis says that he cannot support any additional funding without a formal declaration of war from Congress.

So, we're bringing in Dan Glickman to the group chat. He's a former secretary of agriculture and former congressman who served as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

Thank you so much for being here.

DAN GLICKMAN, SENIOR FELLOW, BIPARTISAN POLICY CENTER: Thank you. CORNISH: What do you think when you see John Curtis saying publicly, in writing on social media, that he stands by the defense, "but he says we must be clear-eyed about history and the Constitution." And I notice that he mentions maintaining our readiness and replenishing stockpiles. How do you vote for one and not the other when the White House is coming to you with one big invoice?

GLICKMAN: Well, it's complicated, but, you know, I think he's right. If we're going to spend another half trillion dollars on defense, surely the Congress has a role in determining how and where that's going to be spent. I mean, after all, constitutionally, Congress has given that authority and this administration and others in the past have often not accepted the fact that Congress has a role in this. But we have a $40 trillion amount of debt that this country has issued. We're just -- this proposal is just --

CORNISH: But he's a lone ranger right now.

GLICKMAN: Well, for whatever reason, neither political party has understood the significance of this massive increase in debt.

[06:40:01]

And in addition, increase in defense spending where it's not as carefully managed as we would like to see it. So, I think that Senator Curtis is basically on the right track, and I hope more Republicans follow him.

SUSAN PAGE, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, "USA TODAY": You know, we know how hard it is, though, to vote against a military appropriation while a war is going on.

CORNISH: Yes.

PAGE: Remember the 2007 supplemental on the Iraq War. The Iraq War, enormously unpopular, but Congress passed the supplemental because you didn't want to put troops in danger when they're already in harm's way. Could that work for this administration this time (ph)?

GLICKMAN: It could. But a half trillion dollars is a lot of money. And they're trying to squeeze out a lot of domestic programs, such as science, health care, medicine, rural development, agriculture, you name it. And the Congress won't go for that.

CORNISH: Yes.

GLICKMAN: So, what we're going to end up with is massive increases in the debt that just -- it's never going to stop.

You know, and this is a problem that both parties have had. I would say the president I served under, Bill Clinton, we did have a balanced budget a few years at the end of the Clinton administration, but it's the only time that we've had that in the last five decades, so to speak.

CORNISH: I know. Let me bring in Sarah, because you actually tried to nose around about

this budget.

SARAH FITZPATRICK, STAFF WRITER, "THE ATLANTIC": Yes.

CORNISH: How did they get to this number?

FITZPATRICK: Well, it almost seems like it's a kind of fantastical budget in a way that other military sources are telling me they are actually concerned, which is really a kind of outrageous thing for people -- you know, if you work within the Pentagon, you're trying to get your project funded. You're never going to say no to more money. But I am amazed at how many people I've spoken to in the last week who've said, this is -- there are no -- there are clearly no guardrails here, and there's clearly no strategy. And so, the very people who are receiving this money are saying, hey, I think this may be problematic.

CORNISH: Like it's a shoot for the moon and hope that you can just get everything?

FITZPATRICK: It's a shoot for the moon but it's a shoot for the moon in a -- without a clear purpose. For example, someone was telling me about being in a meeting where they were presenting a proposal and the head people at the Pentagon came in and said, well, why don't you just triple it? And they were like, there's not enough -- there's no way physically to do that. And it would just be a waste.

CORNISH: But they're like, put the number down, we'll move the money.

FITZPATRICK: Put the number down. It's just -- it's playing fast and loose with numbers (ph).

CORNISH: So, when I look at the things that they want to cut, NIH, HUD, FEMA, these are actually kind of their typical targets. And for anybody who's seen the depositions of DOGE figures, DOGE young men over the last couple of weeks, with them talking about how and why they made their cuts, the public now has a sense that it's not exactly a formal and merit-based process.

SARA FISCHER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA ANALYST: No. And especially the one that stands out to me here is FEMA. Because every time there's a national disaster, there's always this question from the states, why aren't we getting more of a federal response? Well, that's your answer right there. The budget cuts keep hitting it. And that's something that hits people very directly.

Another thing I think about when it comes to the irresponsibility of the budget, you just had Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, firing the Army's chief of staff. You have a lot of staff cuts to veterans who are people that are liked on both sides of the aisle.

So, now you have Congress taking a look at this budget request saying, not only do we think that this is too much money, but who are the people, who is the leadership team that we have and is responsible for allocating this money? If they hadn't gone and done that, you know, fired a bunch of these --

this leadership, that wouldn't have been a stand that Congress could take.

CORNISH: Right.

FISCHER: But now it is,

PAGE: Such a good point.

FISCHER: And then, obviously, of course, you know, Secretary Glickman, on the agriculture point, I think about with FEMA and how people feel. The agriculture impact is going to be in some ways delayed, but likely right in time for the midterms.

CORNISH: Well, we're going to talk more about this, actually. Stay with us because oil prices are back up, of course, after the president threatened to strike Iranian energy facilities if they do not reopen the Strait of Hormuz. And then the fallout of this conflict, as Sara is talking about, has gone way beyond oil. We're talking farmers worldwide. They're seeing, of course, their gas prices soar. And specifically their fertilizer supplies are on the decline. And as the closed Strait begins to affect the global supply chain, that could be affected too.

So, you've got some American farmers here already concerned. They've been dealing with tariffs. They've been dealing with high diesel costs. And now they are bracing for yet another year of thin margins.

Here's a -- sound of someone dealing with that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

URIEL HERNANDEZ, STRAWBERRY FARM OWNER: So, every week we're about -- using about 200 gallons of diesel. On December it was three something a gallon of dyed red diesel, which is what we call it. This last time we put in, it was 1,150. So, it's about a 40 percent increase since December started.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: OK. Where do we even start? You know this best. What does -- what are the knock-on effects of the gas thing first, because those numbers he was saying were stark.

GLICKMAN: OK, so there's a perfect storm happening here. It's not only the tariff issues, which have reduced our exports around the world, particularly in soybeans, but in other things as well. Interest rates. Agriculture is the most interest rate sensitive industry in America. And it's also very energy intensive as well. So, it's like the perfect storm of all these things --

[06:45:00]

CORNISH: So, all the loans they take out to make their farming work.

GLICKMAN: Loans, yes, because --

CORNISH: And on top of that, you've got the --

GLICKMAN: Price of diesel, price of energy and fertilizer. You, you know, you can't, you can't operate a farm without putting crop inputs on the -- on the crops. And so, you need fertilizer desperately. And so, all this is an interesting thing because it's all happening at once.

Now, what the administration has done is they're providing, you know, the bailouts of several billion dollars. They did it beforehand in the first tariff thing. They may do it again this time. But that's not going to satisfy farmers. It's not enough money to take care of their particular problems.

CORNISH: Well, given what they've already been through, right? And then you've got --

GLICKMAN: And low prices. And low prices.

CORNISH: That's what I was going to ask.

GLICKMAN: So, it's like -- you know, it's like, what a business to be in where you have to worry about all these things and yet it's so critical to the American economy and the global economy, because in the developing world, without fertilizers, they can't produce crops at all. So, it could lead to hunger and famine issues (ph).

CORNISH: And there's no U.S. hunger programs to help them, right? They -- weren't they all cut by DOGE.

FISCHER: A lot.

GLICKMAN: A lot. USAID.

PAGE: You're a Democrat, but Kansas, your home state of Kansas has become a very Republican place.

GLICKMAN: Yes.

PAGE: Does this shake the Republican hold on Kansas, or is there no other better place do farmers think that they go (ph)?

GLICKMAN: I suspect that this knee-jerk support for the Trump administration is dissipating because economic issues are dominating it. Now, I don't think that Kansas is likely to vote Democratic in the next presidential election --

CORNISH: Right.

GLICKMAN: But I suspect that the numbers will be a lot closer than they were before and these downstate races may be impacted by that.

President Trump won a lot of these rural counties seven to one, eight to one, nine to one. I don't think that's going to happen. CORNISH: Let's show some polling that gives us at least a snapshot of

the moment. One question pollsters asked, is the Iran War worth U.S. lives lost and financial costs? Oh, wait, it's, does Trump have a clear plan for handling the Iran situation? We wanted to show this because there is a bit of a split between the Republican Party and MAGA. The MAGA diehards say, yes, 93 percent of them say, yes, we see a clear plan. And then meanwhile, other GOP probably leaning towards, we're not so sure. And I want to show you one other, which is about the financial cost of the war that people are starting to have questions about. And you can see in that one, again, the rest of the Republican Party has big questions. And I suspect one or two of the people in that group, even though they weren't polled, were senators or congressmen.

GLICKMAN: You know, my judgment is, is that had the president come out early and spoken to the country as a whole, and given the rationale for this, it would be a little bit different there because, you know, Iran is a bad actor and nuclear weapons we don't want in that region of the world.

CORNISH: But he came out and spoke last week.

GLICKMAN: He came out about four weeks after he went into Iran. And his speech last week was, I thought, fairly ineffective in terms of giving the American people some belief that there's a strategy for all this stuff.

CORNISH: OK.

FISCHER: Yes, and coming after that school bombing in Iran, where at the very beginning of the war the tone was set that we did not have full grapple of the intelligence and understand exactly which targets. For one of your first military actions in Iran to be killing many young school aged children --

CORNISH: Yes, like it overshadowed the successes you're saying that followed?

FISCHER: Yes. Yes.

CORNISH: There's also this thing of the initial military success is not the same as sustained success in the region, right?

FITZPATRICK: Exactly. Absolutely. And also, what are going to be the knock-on effects? I was actually thinking, as we were looking at those -- listening to the farmers, about the fact that, you know, Iran is very good at asymmetrical warfare. So, yes, there's what's going on in the region and around it, but they are very good -- you know, when I talk to national security officials they say, I am most terrified at night about something happening here in the U.S. when we are weakened. And if you have a FEMA that doesn't have enough funding, if you have a strategic national stockpile that doesn't have enough supplies, like, we will be in a worse place national --

CORNISH: Right.

FITZPATRICK: From a national security perspective. And I just don't think they're thinking about --

CORNISH: And I guess you could make a case to fund those things instead of your wish list of all the things with a giant bill at the end.

FITZPATRICK: Absolutely. But --

PAGE: And this, of course, not the war that President Trump thought he was going to be fighting. When he started this war, he thought four to six weeks. We are about to have that time expire.

CORNISH: OK, Dan, thank you so much for being here.

GLICKMAN: You're welcome.

CORNISH: I hope you can come back.

Next on CNN THIS MORNING, we're going to talk about that mission to bring that missing airman back home. What he had with him to help him inside enemy lines.

And then later on CNN, the mission to the moon today. The Artemis crew will fly by the moon.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:53:46]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRETT MCGURK, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: The operation was successful. Obviously, there was some material damage. It is extraordinary, and it is because of what we have done through our military forces, through our special operators, all the jointness and the training and everything else over so many years. Nobody else can do this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: OK, this afternoon, President Trump will be talking about this, the mission that rescued a downed, injured U.S. airman from Iran. So, the president's going to answer questions. We might get some new detail about how special forces pulled off this extraordinary rescue. The Air Force colonel ejected from his plane after it was shot down by Iran on Friday. An intense rescue mission was launched to try to find the airman. For more than a day, the weapon systems officer hid alone in a mountain crevice behind enemy lines. He was located by the CIA and rescued by special forces, including SEAL Team Six.

Group chat is back, and we're bringing in Becca Wasser. She's the defense lead at "Bloomberg Economics."

Thank you so much for being here.

This is not a small mission. What struck me about it, though, is just last week in his speech, the president talked about having total air dominance, that there was no way for Iran to shoot anything down. So, can you give me the context here?

BECCA WASSER, DEFENSE LEAD, "BLOOMBERG ECONOMICS": So, you've heard slightly different wording from -- you've heard slightly different wording from, you know, the Department of Defense, from Dan Caine, where they've talked about having air superiority.

[06:55:08]

And initially they talked about having localized air superiority, which means that they have dominance over some parts of Iran. That has shifted over time. But I think what we are increasingly seeing is the fact that even if there are these pockets of air superiority, they're not just geography, they're also time-based. And so there are some of these threats that can pop out at any time. And these are things for mobile missile launchers to drones. And these threats are real. And they're likely going to continue. So, if President Trump is looking at further ground operations or further operations in Iran, these are threats that need to be considered especially in the Strait.

CORNISH: And just to let people know, inside that mission you had airmen hiding in the mountains, as we mentioned, and he had a pistol. He had a tracking beacon. And then the U.S. launches this rescue, multiple agencies, right, and special ops and Navy SEALs. And so, I don't -- I am glad that this mission was successful. The question is, are we putting ourselves in the position to have to do more of these?

FITZPATRICK: Absolutely. And what are the potential costs? I mean we're all so happy that this worked out. But had this not, it could have been a huge loss of life. Think about how many people were involved in this operation. I mean this is in a substantial -- any time you go into, you know, enemy theater, you are exposing yourself, but also the enemy is learning a lot about what you do and how you do it. So, it's not without cost here.

CORNISH: Trump has said to "Axios" that "the U.S. military had 'beeping information' about the officer's location." The tracker he mentioned. And that after "a radio message, officials suspected he might be in Iranian captivity and that the Iranians were 'sending false signals' to try to lure U.S. forces into a trap."

Is that a thing?

WASSER: Well, deception is always a thing in any military operation. And, in fact, this is very much what the U.S. was doing with the CIA essentially having a false decoy mission over in a different part of geography in order to safely secure the airmen.

CORNISH: OK. So, let's talk about how the president is going to go forward. We're going to hear detail today. He spoke last week. The bill has come due, right? The bill is coming to Congress. It's safe to say we're moving into a different phase of this war. And I remember last week in his speech he mentioned, like, Vietnam lasted this long, Korea lasted this long. He was already trying to set the stage, right?

FISCHER: Which is unbelievable considering the fact that he ran on a no forever wars platform, and now he's trying to convince the American people, hey, this might last a little bit longer than you were -- we were initially expecting. So, here's what you have to think about when you're President Trump.

First and foremost, getting this extra funding is going to be mission critical because you're not going to be able to carry this out the way that you want to without that extra money. So, he actually now needs to appeal to The Hill. By the way, something he has not been doing for the past few months. We've seen so many issues with getting the government open and getting checks --

CORNISH: You mean not sending some high -ranking there to --

FISCHER: No, he's got to -- he's got to deal with The Hill directly if he wants to get this funding.

CORNISH: Got it.

FISCHER: And, I mean, you heard Senator Kaine over the weekend basically saying, like, Democrats are not going to budge on this. And there's also concerns from Republicans, especially veterans, who are worried, again, about the leadership issue. What is Secretary Hegseth working with here? So, that's the first and foremost thing he's got to do.

And then the second thing he needs to do is make a broader appeal to the American people ahead of the midterms. I know Donald Trump is not necessarily thinking about his future for 2028, but the entire party is worried about their future for 2026. And so that's got to be a two- step punch coming in the next few days.

CORNISH: Yes. Let me -- you mentioned Tim Kaine. I want to play that for the table. You guys can react on the other side of it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TIM KAINE (D-VA): I don't think Congress is going to be in a mood to write a blank check to a leadership team, a civilian leadership team that seems so inept these days.

REP. ADAM SMITH (D-WA): We ought to be willing to pay for it, and we ought to have congressional authorization for it. I think this war was a mistake.

REP. RO KHANNA (D-CA): We could have universal child care for that. We could have free public college for that. We could pay teachers $60,000 for that. I call it a new economic patriotism. Democrats need to oppose this funding and say, we're actually for the American people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PAGE: Of course, this is how military actions become forever wars, right? One thing happens that you didn't expect that prompts you to make a new commitment. Then they respond. Then you want to retaliate to that. So, this is -- the risk is that Americans will see this as a familiar story that they saw before and in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. CORNISH: And I heard the president last week also saying that he

wanted to protect Arab allies, right? He was saying, these are our friends and we're going to protect them. And I thought, oh, OK, we are. You know, I mean, like what's that going to cost? Is any scenario that's not boots on the ground, and I say that meaning the Strait or going after infrastructure or any of the power plant day (ph), what's the scenario where you can keep doing this from the air?

WASSER: I mean, you can keep doing it from the air, but the question becomes how long? Because air power can only do so much without further engagement.

[07:00:03]

And so, you can have a United States that continues to pummel Iran. You can have Trump's f-bombs turn into real bombs even more. But at the end of the day, unless there's additional skin in the game, it's going to be really hard to achieve all of those objectives that President Trump and his team have laid out and have been shifting over time, and some of the objectives that the gulf states want, which is security. And they're not going to have that as long as the missile and drone threat remains.

CORNISH: OK, last words.

Becca, thank you so much.

Thank you for joining us. The headlines are next.