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U.S. Military Seizes Iranian-Flagged Ship; Crude Oil Jumps Amid Renewed Tensions; Harrison Mann is Interviewed about Trump's Iran Threats. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired April 20, 2026 - 06:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:32:43]

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everybody. I'm Audie Cornish. I want to thank you for joining me on CNN THIS MORNING.

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

A Louisiana community is in mourning. Eight children are dead after the father of seven of those children went on a shooting rampage on Sunday morning. Now, one of the victims was a cousin to the siblings. Officials say the man also shot two women, the mother of those children. They survived. And the man was eventually killed by police. Investigators say the situation was, quote, "domestic in nature."

And in Virginia tomorrow, voters are going to head to the polls. There won't be any candidates on the ballot. They're actually going to vote on a referendum on whether to redraw the state's house map, which would favor the Democratic Party. It's their way of countering the Republican-led redistricting fight that's happened in many states, including Texas.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TIM KAINE (D-VA): One hundred percent of Virginians want election results to be respected. We're deeply worried that Donald Trump will try to interfere with the election results this November or in 2028.

REP. JEN KIGGANS (R-VA): Two wrongs don't make a right. That's fair for Virginia the way it is. And we don't want to change it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Now, if this passes, Democrats would have an even stronger chance of winning back the House in the midterms in November.

And Vice President J.D. Vance will travel to Pakistan to lead another round of peace talks with Iran. He'll be joined by Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner. It is unclear if Iran will attend given the tensions unfolding overnight.

For instance, the U.S. military seized an Iranian flagged cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman. New video released by U.S. Central Command is showing these are Marines boarding the ship after it tried to pass through the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports. And Iran is vowing to retaliate.

I've got CNNs Oren Liebermann joining us live from Jerusalem.

Can you tell us the latest this morning on this seizure and what impact it could have on whether or not these talks are held?

OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN JERUSALEM BUREAU CHIEF: Audie, let's walk through the seizure of the ship itself, and then we'll get to where we stand now with what might happen over the course of the next 24, 48 hours.

[06:35:00]

So, all of this in terms of the seizure plays out over a period of more than six hours on Sunday. That's where U.S. Central Command says that the USS Spruance, a guided missile destroyer, told an Iranian tanker, the Touska, to stop and abide by the U.S. imposed blockade of Iranian ports. That Touska had been headed towards the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas. After the ship itself kept on moving, that's where the USS Spruance issued a warning to the sailors on board the tanker, that is the Touska, to evacuate the engine room, and they used the five- inch gun on board the destroyer to disable the ship itself. And that's where you see this video playing in, helicopter video, showing U.S. Marines from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit boarding the Touska itself and seizing it, taking it into U.S. custody, where it now remains.

The question now, what happens to the ship itself and what happens to the sailors on board the ship? Naval experts telling us that any Iranian sailors could be detained, sailors from other countries could be repatriated to those countries. So, those are all key questions with the ship itself.

Iran is now expressing outrage. They're saying they have no plans to participate in another round of talks, quote, "as of now," according to the spokesman for Iran's foreign ministry, as, according to Iranian state media, Iran vows some sort of retaliation or revenge for this.

All of that puts into question whether there will be another round of talks. President Donald Trump has signaled that the vice president and other senior advisors and envoys will be taking part, but Iran has yet to definitively say that they'll be there. Whether this is all just political bluster or positioning or they really have pulled out of talks, that's a question we're going to find out an answer to very soon. But one of the key points to make here is that the Strait of Hormuz remains closed.

Take a look at this shot quickly of live monitoring of traffic through the Strait. Nothing moving through that Strait as there are bottlenecks on both sides, Audie. All of this critical here as we get into what should be a key second round of talks that may not happen now.

CORNISH: OK. That's Oren Liebermann. Thank you for that update on that seizure. I want to talk more about this because, of course, it contributes to

this roller coaster of a ride on oil prices. They're back up this morning. Iran's reimposed control over the Strait of Hormuz sending prices higher.

Now the president's energy secretary, Chris Wright, says that relief is on the way. He's offering a different, let's say, timeline than what we've been hearing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: When do you think it's realistic for Americans to expect that gas will go back to under $3 a gallon?

CHRIS WRIGHT, ENERGY SECRETARY: I don't know. That could happen later this year. That might not happen till next year. But prices have likely peaked and they'll start going down. Certainly with a resolution of this conflict, you'll see prices go down.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: OK, Sabrina Singh is in. She's a CNN political commentator and former deputy Pentagon press secretary under the Biden administration.

Now, typically, I wouldn't turn to a defense person to ask about what the energy person is saying, but these things are linked, right? And he's offering vibes. It's not quite a timeline.

SABRINA SINGH, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. So, I think you're totally right, that defense and energy sectors are linked. And that's because the Strait of Hormuz is completely closed.

What is telling about what Secretary Wright said on Sunday is that we have no real clue when gas prices are going to go down, and that is hitting here at home, the American consumer, but, obviously, global markets are responding.

And I think something that, you know, Secretary Wright did not acknowledge is the countries that are benefiting the most right now is a country like Russia, whose oil is now -- other countries are turning to, to their energy markets, and they are able to fund their war in Ukraine. And the other country that's benefiting is China. We have pulled tremendous military assets, patriot batteries, bad batteries. We've pulled a Marine unit, the 31st, out of the Indo-Pacific and other military assets out. And so, China's looking at all this.

CORNISH: Yes.

SINGH: And we've basically left our allies in the Indo-Pacific completely naked.

CORNISH: You're nodding. I know you cover the White House. What's your sense of how they think of this? Are they hoping people won't notice this Russia-China part? Or is it they are hoping that the gas prices really will adjust themselves over time? SARAH FITZPATRICK, STAFF WRITER, "THE ATLANTIC": I think there's a lot

of magical thinking going on, quite frankly, in the West Wing and beyond. But I think it speaks to the fact that, in the Pentagon and beyond, you know, the United States has spent so much time and energy over decades building up the expertise to predict possible ramifications of our actions to have downside risk assessments that the president should be thinking about when he's making these types of decisions. And I think what we're seeing here, this kind of scramble, the uncertainty, reflects that that information is not getting to the White House. It is not getting to the president in a way, or he's disregarding it. And either of those, I think, these are all things that could have been -- these are all knowns. These are things that could have been avoided and would have been perfectly obvious had those experts been consulted.

CORNISH: Yes.

[06:40:00]

SUSAN PAGE, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, "USA TODAY": You know, politically, the problem for President Trump is not only that gas prices are going to be above $3 a gallon into the midterm elections, I think that is probably a safe bet, but that Americans blame him.

CORNISH: Yes.

PAGE: Two-thirds of Americans say it's a consequence of the war of choice in Iran. It's not some mysterious set of foreign factors that are hard to understand. So, that puts him in a precarious place because we know that gas prices are a proxy for inflation, and inflation is the most important issue to Americans when you talk about the economy today.

SINGH: On that point, too, on the polling, it's 65 percent of Americans blame Donald Trump. But the number that was really telling in the Quinnipiac poll last week was 73 percent of independents blame Trump.

CORNISH: Yes.

SINGH: And those are the people that Democrats are going to go after in the midterms.

CORNISH: We're going to talk more about them later. But, yes, right now people are already being asked by pollsters how much of a problem is the price of gas right now. Large numbers saying serious or somewhat serious. And then here is their explanation from Trump. I just want to play this for you so you can get a sense of, like, how he has been wrestling with this since the start of these strikes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: Are you worried about gas prices right now?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No. No. This is -- this is a short excursion into something that should have been done for 47 years.

This doesn't really affect us. We have so much oil. We have tremendous oil and gas, much more than we need.

MARIA BARTIROMO, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Do you believe the price of oil and gas will be lower before the midterm elections?

TRUMP: I hope so. I mean, I think so. It could be. It could be or the same or maybe a little bit higher, but it should be around the same. I think this won't be that much longer.

\Well, they're not very high. If you look at what they were supposed to be in order to get rid of a nuclear weapon, with the danger that entails.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: And then I want to play one more thing for you, just in reply. Some people who were talking to us outside of the TPUSA event in Phoenix, right, Turning Points USA. These are fans of Trump. And here is how they are reading this moment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think, ultimately, he's a populist president. So, I think the war isn't a populist issue. So, hopefully we're able to get out of that and hopefully we get back to affordability, right? I think we voted for, like you saw the stickers all the time, right, we're OK with mean tweets as long as we get low gas prices.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: I had to go verify that was a real hat. That was a real slogan.

SARA FISCHER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA ANALYST: No, I think he reflects this shrinking MAGA tent. It was so wide in the 2024 election, in part because Donald Trump teamed up with folks like Joe Rogan to go on their podcasts and reach a huge, huge, huge audience. And what you're seeing now is that that tent's shrinking and shrinking and shrinking. Whether it's disenfranchised white male voters, or even people who are super religious. You've seen the president go to battle with Pope Leo. This shrinking tent is not going to serve them very well in the midterms if this continues (ph).

CORNISH: OK, I'm glad you brought that up, Sara. I see you're -- so, we're like this.

So, here's something the president is going to be doing. He's going to be doing a Bible reading from the Oval Office tomorrow. He's going to be one of 500 speakers in an event organizers are calling America Reads the Bible. His appearance from the White House will come one week after he deleted this A.I. generated image of himself as a Christ-like, or as he described doctor-like figure, amid his ongoing feud with the pope over the war with Iran.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I like Donald a lot, but I'm not -- he needs to -- he needed to calm it down.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't think it helps the president at all. I think it's colossally stupid.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I certainly think it's important that everybody should have their opinion.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a little ridiculous with Vance coming out and saying that the pope should watch what he says about theology when it's -- that's kind of the pope's thing. So, I think the whole thing is a little -- I don't understand why he's picking a fight with the pope.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: And neither does the pope. Here's Pope Leo on Saturday when he was asked about this feud.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

POPE LEO: The first day of the trip, the president of the United States made some comments about myself. Much of what has been written since then has been more commentary on commentary, trying to interpret what has been said. It was looked at as if I was trying to debate again the president, which is not my interest at all.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Yes, unsubscribe.

FISCHER: No interest in debating the president on this one. He wants to stay out of all this chaos and out of all of this fray, as he should. But I just think back to that moment, I think it was 2021, when President Trump held up the Bible in front of that church, in front of the White House, and the flak that he took from sort of politicizing the Bible in that moment, you would have think that he would have learned from that situation.

SINGH: Yes.

FISCHER: Fast forward all these years. Clearly has not.

CORNISH: Yes, but there's also this element of after Covid, when so many spiritual leaders were frustrated that churches were closed, the Trump folks, I think, felt like they were able to peel off a lot of support and voters through that process. Are we seeing a sort of -- not breakup, but definitely cracks in the, the post pandemic MAGA coalition built on stuff like this.

[06:45:05]

PAGE: Yes. You know, it's surprising in a way that Joe Biden, who was, in fact, a pretty religious Catholic -- CORNISH: Yes.

PAGE: Didn't benefit from that I think politically too much. President Trump did in the election. His appeal to conservative Christians, including conservative Catholics, was pretty significant and part of his winning coalition.

But you heard this very common-sense political advice from the men and women on the street that you interviewed that, what -- how does a feud with the pope make sense?

CORNISH: Yes, especially when you're losing.

SINGH: And it was that comment, and then, I mean, it was Trump's comments on the pope and then also his previous Truth post that said he was going to destroy a complete civilization that I think a lot of people in this country, across the religious, you know, spectrum, really balked at that and said that is far too --

CORNISH: You know who's going to be at this event? Pete Hegseth. Who, I think very much, along with Paula White, Trump's spiritual advisor.

SINGH: Right.

CORNISH: I mean Hegseth has made this --

SINGH: Yes.

CORNISH: This sort of just war idea, the sort of trying to attach biblical and theological support to a war and military strikes.

SINGH: Yes.

He's -- he has weaponized religion in a way to justify this war, but then also to justify going after the press. I mean we saw that last week at that press conference comparing, you know, the coverage that he's getting is like something negative that happened in religious times. We have not seen a secretary of defense ever do this. We've never seen a president tweet out a Christ-like image of himself before or post on Truth Social. What you're seeing is this weaponization. And I think Catholics and, frankly, across the religious spectrum, people are deeply uncomfortable with that. They just want the president to focus on doing his job, focus on bringing down prices, whether its electricity, grocery prices, you name it. And instead, we're getting in fights with the pope, who is going to outlast this president.

CORNISH: Yes. It will be interesting to see, though, if by the time the back and forth is done, Leo is dinged and that suddenly he's just another player in the partisan warfare of U.S. politics.

FISCHER: I think that the pope will rise above it. I don't think he's just another player. I think that the devout Catholics are always going to respect him. To your point, you know, he'll outlast the president.

I just think that for this particular presidency, there's always red lines that they're testing and they're trying to walk up towards. I think this is a very bright red line, as you heard from those men on the street interviews. People don't want the president or his administration to be using their religious beliefs to justify political action.

PAGE: An American pope with a sense of American sensibilities, that makes him, even if he doesn't want to have a feud with the president, it makes him more skilled, I think, at recognizing red lines with Americans, but also at making a case to Americans speaking in Chicago accented English.

CORNISH: Yes. OK.

Sabrina, thank you for joining us.

Coming up on CNN THIS MORNING, there's new threats, new talks. We're going to ask, what did the president misread about going to war with Iran?

Plus.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE ROGAN, HOST, "THE JOE ROGAN EXPERIENCE": It's like, what the (EXPLETIVE DELETED) are we doing? Like, how is this still going on?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Comedian and podcaster Joe Rogan has been a vocal critic of the war in Iran. Is the president trying to get back on Rogan's good side?

And later on CNN, large groups of teens swarming streets across the country. Now, community leaders are trying to curb teen takeovers.

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[06:51:32]

CORNISH: So, just days until the ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran is set to expire, President Trump is once again making a dire threat as a new round of talks are in jeopardy. He posted this, quote, "we're offering a very fair and reasonable deal, and I hope they take it, because if they don't, the U.S. is going to knock out every single power plant and every single bridge in Iran. No more Mr. Nice Guy."

So, some critics have called what the president is threatening a war crime, something the administration has denied.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE WALTZ, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS: I just want to get ahead of this other ridiculous and, frankly, irresponsible narrative that this would somehow constitute a, quote, "war crime," that we've heard from Democratic politicians, the media and others in the international community. That is wrong. It's irresponsible. And we have a long history of taking down bridges, power plants and other infrastructure that is powering Iran's military.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: All right, group chat is back.

And we're bringing in Harrison Mann. He's a former U.S. Army major and former executive officer of the Defense Intelligence Agency's Middle East Africa Regional Center, to talk about a couple things. One, this idea of war crimes, but, two, something he just said, we have a long history of attacking infrastructure. When you hear that, can you help me understand the history there?

MAJ. HARRISON MANN (RET.), FORMER DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE OFFICIAL: Yes. As somebody who resigned under the last administration to avoid being complicit in war crimes, I, unfortunately, have some experience on this.

There is a long history of the U.S. attacking civilian infrastructure. Sometimes, under very specific circumstances, it can be justified legally if you say that this power plant or bridge has military value. But in this case, Trump himself has made it very clear that these targets have no military value. That's why they haven't been blown up yet six weeks into this war. And he's only threatening them -- threatening to destroy them as a punishment to the Iranian government.

CORNISH: Yes, but a regime, like Iran's regime, all of these things contribute to them maintaining their grip on power, right? It seems like he's trying to use, for instance, bombing of the first bridge as leverage to show he's serious.

MANN: He is indeed doing war crimes to show that he's serious. I mean, every part of the country contributes to national power, but that, you know, that's a very slippery slope. That's schools, universities, right? That's why possibly we see Israel blowing up universities because they say, oh, that trains nuclear scientists who build Iran's nuclear program. Yes, it contributes to the government, but it doesn't make it legal, and it doesn't make it right to attack those.

CORNISH: Well, one of the things that's interesting is seeing this conversation happen with Democrats as well on -- and on the left, which is, how do you spend your time if you want to stop a war, right? Do you do a war powers resolution? Do you have all of this talk about war crimes? Like, what's a useful way for people who were against this to protest it, those who are in political office?

MANN: So, one really easy way, if we're talking about Congress, is to stop paying for the war. So, the Trump administration multiple times now has floated first $50 billion, then $200 billion, then $100 billion supplemental funding bills to pay for the cost of this war. And by the way, it is definitely going to reach $100 billion. When we talk about the many costs on the American people.

But beyond that, I would say, honestly, if you are blindly funding the Pentagon budget and you know that's going to go towards a war that you don't want, what are you doing, right? Congress figured out they should stop funding DHS because they didn't like what ICE was doing. [06:55:02]

They need to think about using the same pressure about the Pentagon.

CORNISH: I'm glad you're here as a man, as a guy, former military and as somebody who is anti-war, because that is a Venn diagram that's been a circle, frankly, in this conversation when people are saying they don't like what the president is doing. And the president has basically tried to draw some lines between high profile critics in conservative media and others.

So, he publicly challenged Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly when they did not align with him on the war with Iran. He called them "low I.Q.," "nut jobs," "troublemakers." And then there's Joe Rogan, Oval Office, with the president this weekend, as the president signs off on an executive order to ease restrictions on medical research for psychedelic drugs. This is an initiative backed by Rogan. And, honestly, maybe we wouldn't notice if Rogan hadn't made these comments up to just days prior to this visit to the White House.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE ROGAN, HOST, "THE JOE ROGAN EXPERIENCE": Most people that voted for Trump are wanted Trump to be in office, one of the things that was attractive was this no more wars.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sure. Of course.

ROGAN: And now we're in one of the craziest ones.

A.I. god. The one that created that Jesus meme that Trump just posted, that's A.I. god.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Joe, I told you he explained it. He was a doctor.

ROGAN: That's what they call them. That's what A.I. god calls Jesus.

Now, ICE are villains. And now people are looking at them like murderous military people that are on the streets of our city and they're masked up, which is also a problem.

Are we really going to be the gestapo? Where's your papers? Is that what we've come to?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: It goes on and on like this if we go through the past few months. Why is he untouchable? How come he's at the Oval Office and Tucker Carlson isn't?

FISCHER: There's a lot of reasons. First and foremost, Donald Trump and Joe Rogan have this relationship, in part, because Joe Rogan, former UFC announcer, has a great relationship with Dana White, who is a Trump ally. So, that's one way that they're connected.

Trump is, obviously, hosting this big UFC fight for America 250. Joe Rogan's expected to be a commentator. They recognize that they're going to need his face and his brand to draw attention to what they want to do.

And then third, Joe Rogan has been a very vocal, outspoken person when it comes to using psychedelics in the medical community. And so, when you see this announcement, in particular about using psychedelics for medical research, obviously Joe Rogan is a great surrogate. Those things combined --

CORNISH: This sounds very transactional.

FISCHER: It's very transactional.

CORNISH: Who believes in what they're saying on this -- in this photo?

PAGE: You know, you talked about the shrinking MAGA tent before. And I think the reason you see this disparate treatment of Joe Rogan is because he is part of that bigger MAGA tent. And if you have any hopes of having a bigger MAGA tent, say, in the midterms, Joe Rogan could be part of that.

CORNISH: I feel like they're trying to protect their lifeline to dudes who look and sound like you. Like a military dude. Independent thinking. Anti-war. Like, it feels like they would have lost that person.

MANN: So, I think even though Trump's MAGA base is still behind him on the war, there's aspects of it that are -- that are inherently unpopular with dudes who look and sound like me. Y'all already touched on the inflation, the economic cost. We haven't even gotten into how groceries are going to get much more expensive because fertilizer also goes through the Strait of Hormuz. But then there's another aspect that's very unpopular with all Americans, especially young men, especially Trump's base, and that's the perception of fighting a war on behalf of Israel, which the Trump administration has repeatedly stepped on a rake and reinforced.

CORNISH: Yes. And we've talked about on this show the horseshoe politics of that on the left and on the right, how they are wrangling with their most marquee voices, specifically on Israel.

MANN: Yes. And so, you know, as long as that continues -- and even actually Trump did a Truth Social post I think this weekend where he said, whether you like Israel or not, which is unusual for him acknowledging that he knows a lot of people do not like Israel, and that's a very unpopular part of this war. And so, I think he's finally woken up to the fact that this is a really unpopular war, and it threatens at least a small segment of his normal supporters.

CORNISH: OK.

So, before I go, I want to do group chats. And first I need to shout out Susan Page's new book, which is called, "The Queen and Her Presidents." It's out now. And, in my group chat, Sarah Fitzpatrick's latest in "The Atlantic," "The FBI Director is MIA." Are people sending you messages about this? FITZPATRICK: I have been inundated. I've literally been on the phone

nonstop since the moment it published if I wasn't on television.

CORNISH: OK, Sara, what's in your group chat?

FISCHER: Coachella is hot.

CORNISH: People are still talking about it?

FISCHER: It's iconic. So, Madonna made an appearance with Sabrina Carpenter coming out, and they had Justin Bieber bringing Billie Eilish, who's had a longtime crush on him, on stage.

But I bring that up, Audie, because it's actually become a very important moment for the music industry.

CORNISH: Yes.

FISCHER: A celebratory moment. Bigger than the Grammys. Bigger than any other award show. Coachella is hot and relevant.

CORNISH: And if you do it right, it can be a Super Bowl-level moment for you, right, in terms of people talking about it and those performances.

[07:00:01]

FISCHER: Yes. And brands getting involved. This has become a big commercial success too.

CORNISH: All right.

Harrison, thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate it.

And thank you for being with us in the group chat, waking up with us. Get ready for the week. I'm Audie Cornish. And the headlines are next.