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Trump Meeting With German Chancellor As War Consumes Mideast; Trump: "Plenty" Of Ammunition To Continue War In Iran; Trump Says New Strikes Today Targeted More Iranian Leaders; Trump: "Just About Everything's Been Knocked Out" In Iran; War Consumes Mideast As U.S. Allies Fend Of Iran Attacks. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired March 03, 2026 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: What does that mean?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, you have to ask Mark Rutte. He said, not as part of NATO, but to be helpful to you in this.

TRUMP: Well, some of the European nations have been helpful and some haven't, and I'm, you know, very surprised. And Germany has been great. He's been terrific, others have been very good, terrific. I think that the head of NATO Mark is fantastic. Mark Rutte, I think he's fantastic. But some of the European, like Spain, has been terrible. In fact, I told Scott to cut off all dealings with Spain.

First of all, it started when every, every European nation, at my request, paid 5 percent, which they should be doing and everybody was enthusiastic about it, Germany, everybody, and Spain didn't do it. And now Spain actually said that we can't use their bases and that's all right. We could use their base if we want. We could just fly in and use it. Nobody's going to tell us not to use it, but we don't have to, but they were unfriendly.

And so, I told him, we don't want to. Spain has absolutely nothing that we need other than great people. They have great people, but they don't have great leadership. And as you know, they were the only country that in NATO would not agree to go up to 5 percent. I don't think they would have agreed to go up to anything. They wanted to keep it at 2 percent, and they don't pay the 2 percent. So, we're going to cut off all trade with Spain. We don't want anything to do with Spain.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is that the nation --

TRUMP: And I'm not -- by the way, I'm not happy with the U.K. either. That island that you read about the lease. OK. He made it for whatever reason. He made a lease of the island. Somebody came and took it away from him, and it's taken three, four days for us to work out where we can land there, would have been much more convenient landing there, as opposed to flying many extra hours. So, we are very surprised. This is not Winston Churchill that we're dealing with. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President, what's your expectations towards Germany? What can Germany do and what should Germany do (inaudible)?

TRUMP: Well, I think they're doing. I mean, they're letting us land in certain areas, and that's we appreciate it. And they're just making it comfortable. We're not asking them to put boots on the ground or anything. We're just -- they're a respected country. I have a very good relationship with the country. We have, in particular now with this leader, with this new leader, I think he's an excellent leader.

And I had my differences with Angela. I said, you're hurting your country with immigration and you're hurting your country with energy. And we have a man sitting on my right that is, I think, pretty much the opposite of her on energy and the opposite on immigration. And I think he's doing very well.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (inaudible) thousands of Americans were stranded. Why wasn't there an evacuation plan? And will you send claims to get people out?

TRUMP: Well, because it happened all very quickly. We thought and I thought maybe more so than most I could ask Marco, but I thought we were going to have a situation where we were going to be attacked. They were getting ready to attack Israel. They were getting ready to attack others. You're seeing that right now. And a lot of those missiles that are hitting, and those are stationary, those were aimed there for a long period of time, at these other countries.

So, I think I was right about that. We attacked first, and if we didn't, it could have been, you know, look, we're really decimating them. They're being decimated. And if we didn't -- if we didn't -- and by the way, we have massive amounts of ammunition. We have the high end, a lot of it was given away, stupidly by Biden, very stupidly, for free. And I'm all for Ukraine, but they gave away a lot.

As you know, when I give away ammunition, everybody pays for it. The European Union is paying for it. Then they can do what they want with it, but they are giving it, let's say, to Ukraine, and it's OK. But we gave away a lot of high-end, but we have plenty. But we have unlimited middle and upper ammunition, which is really what we're using in this war. And we have an -- really an unlimited supply.

We also have a lot of the very high-end stored in different countries throughout the world. With this, we're literally storing it there, which is actually something that I insisted on in my first term. I rebuilt the military in my first term. The military is great. A lot of -- a lot, unbelievable amount of ammunition or munitions, as they say, we given away to. You know, the Wall Street Journal incorrectly covered the story when they said that it was given away to the Middle East, not to the Middle East was given away to Ukraine. Very little was given to the Middle East.

[12:05:00] Middle East would buy a lot, and some of the nations, because they're rich, they have a lot. But it was given away to Ukraine, and it just should have been done. Look, it's a war that should have never happened. If I were president, that war would have never happened, but we have a tremendous amount of munitions, ammunition at the upper level -- middle and upper level, all of which is really powerful stuff.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How worried are you that the rising prices for gas and oil are damaging the American economy and also (inaudible)?

TRUMP: Yeah, Germany, go ahead.

FRIEDRICH MERZ, GERMAN CHANCELLOR: Yeah, sure. This is, of course, damaging our economies. This is true for the oil prices, and this is true for the gas prices as well. So that's the reason why we all hope that this war will come to an end as soon as possible. And we are hoping that the Israelian and the American army are doing the right things to bring this to an end and to have really a new government in place who is coming back to peace and freedom.

TRUMP: Yeah. Something had to be done. And it's been 47 years they've been killing people all over the world for a long time. They were the kings and fathers of the roadside bomb, Soleimani. We killed him last term. If we didn't, I think it might be a different story today. They would have been much stronger and smarter than they are. But they did the roadside bombs.

95 percent of the people lost their legs, arms, had their face wiped out, just wiped out. I've seen some young people that it's so sad to watch. And that was all -- almost all, 95 percent comes from Iran. And with Soleimani, Soleimani loved his favorite weapon. He loved the roadside bomb.

And when you see people walking around with no legs and no arms and a face that's been blown to hell, these people what they have to go and the way they have to live, this is -- this is Iran. When you look at the barracks, the famous barracks, when you look at the hostages, when you look at a lot of hostages, when you look at all of the problems, they were really a purveyor of terror all over the world for many, many years.

And it's something that had to be done, something. And I believe that if we didn't, because I see where Congress, you know, if I didn't do this, guys like Schumer, who are losers. The Democrats, they're losers. That's why they're not here. Guys like Schumer would say, well, you should have done this. In other words, if I did it, it's no good. If I didn't do it, they would have said the opposite, that you should have done this.

But most people feel -- I tell you what, I have never had more compliments on something I did. People felt it something that had to be done. So, if we have a little high oil prices for a little while, but as soon as this ends, those prices are going to drop, I believe, lower than even before.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: Go ahead, please.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President, how many work (inaudible) between E.U. and U.S. --

TRUMP: And U.S. and who?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The E.U., European Union.

TRUMP: Well, we won on tariffs, actually. Somebody said, you actually won the case. We won on tariffs. We had a decision that was wrong, which is very bad decision from certain standpoints, from other standpoints, a very powerful decision, because it reaffirmed all the fact that we have these -- all these various forms of tariffs that we felt right, but it totally reaffirmed.

It said, you can use all of these tariffs. So, we have all these vast menus of tariffs, and tariffs have made our country very rich. We have to charge tariffs to nations who play with their money. You know, they move their money up and down, like a yo-yo. We have to do. We have to take care of nations that have been good to us and fair to us and we're going to take care of them. Other nations, they haven't and we haven't let them take advantage of us.

But the whole thing with tariffs is we had a decision that, as an example, we have a license situation and the license is something that allows us to immediately stop all business with nobody even knew we had this power, but we do now, because of the decision. We have the right to stop all business having to do with a certain country, if a certain country is not treating us well.

The president, without going to Congress who has the right to stop. Sort of interesting. I have the right to stop, but under that one law, I didn't have the right to charge him. So, I have the right to license them, but I don't have the right to charge, which is frankly ridiculous, but the right was given to us by the Supreme Court.

[12:10:00]

And we have the right as an example we talked about Spain. I could - tomorrow stop, or today even better, stop everything having to do with Spain, all business having to do with Spain, have the right to stop it, embargoes. Do anything, I want with it, and we may do that with Spain. What do you think?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, sir, I think we're going to talk about it with you. I know that you have strong power (inaudible). We know you can use it, and if you need to use it to assure national and economic security, we'll do it.

TRUMP: Scott, you have an opinion?

SCOTT BESSENT, UNITED STATES SECRETARY OF TREASURY: Sir, I agree. The Supreme Court reaffirmed your ability to implement an embargo. And they -- as we've talked, from your first term, the Section 301 and the 232 have withheld more than 4000 lawsuits, and USTR and commerce are going to instigate, are going to begin investigations, and we'll move forward with those.

TRUMP: And we've instituted a 15 percent tariff on everybody, as you know. And just used -- I'll tell you, we had a couple of paragraphs written in that -- in that opinion that were really incredible, like Justice Kavanaugh wrote a fantastic dissent. But in his dissent, he said what we should do and we knew that too. We just wanted to simplify it.

And for some reason, I think, you know, very, very foolishly, the courts decided no, but they said you can do it many other ways, and that's what we're doing. And what we've done is we've gone to a very simple, straight 15 percent tariff. It's taken in -- we've taken in hundreds of billions of dollars in our country because of tariffs.

So, we've taken in all of this money, hundreds of billions of dollars, and honestly, it's made us very rich as a country. So, it's been doing good. When will you have the full plan implemented? We have a five- month period, up to five months, where we can go at 15 percent. And while we're doing that, as you know, we're doing the various studies and things and we'll be coming out with tariffs, different tariffs on different countries. You want to talk about that please?

JAMIESON GREER, UNITED STATES TRADE REPRESENTATIVE: Yes, Sir. By the time the five-month period has elapsed, we'll have completed investigations under Section 301. Secretary Bessent talked about. We know there are countries out there with deals who are very interested in keeping the deals. We need to go through and investigate all these unfair trading practices, the kinds of things you talked about, and make sure that we're protecting U.S. economic security. We know their country --

TRUMP: How well we're going to treat Germany? I think you should hit them very, very hard.

GREER: You know, he was right there. They want to -- they have expressed an interest, Germany, been quite constructive and wanting to move forward and be helpful. You know, the rest of you will talk to them as well, but obviously, well --

TRUMP: I will say every country, every single country, wants to make the deal they already have. In other words, a deal that we have using the other authority. They want to make the same deal and we'd like to see -- actually, we're going to adjust it somewhat upward, actually, but they would like -- they all want to stay in the deal. And so, we'll probably be able to do that pretty easily.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: After all, Iran won't be able to deliver drones to Russia anymore. So, what does it more mean to Ukraine and (inaudible) next to you. Who would you call if you want to talk to Europe? And Chancellor, has you just been in China (inaudible) -- TRUMP: Who you -- what country are you from?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (inaudible).

TRUMP: OK. I thought so, I could say

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So, Mr. Chancellor, you have been in China --

TRUMP: She likes you.

MERZ: I don't know.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can you be talking about China --

TRUMP: We'll be talking about China, yes. I'll be going to China in a little while. Every time you meet, you talk about China. We respect China. I do. We both do, I think, but it's always a topic of conversation. We've had a very good relationship with China. We used to lose a tremendous amount of money with China, and that's no longer the case. We have a very, very good relationship with China, and we have a very good relationship with Germany. All right.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President, we've seen countries around the world, many of whom don't usually work together, working with the United States on Iran, whether it's, you know, Saudi Arabia work right the United States, Israel. Qatari shooting down Iranian aircraft. And we've also seen European countries step up. Why are we seeing, you know, such unity around the world against Iran.

[12:15:00]

TRUMP: It's a great point. Look, they're just evil. They're not the politics. It's their whole philosophy. It's their whole where they come from. It's terrible. Where they kill 35,000, I thought it was 32, now it turns out much more than 35,000 people. And in some cases, using machine guns with people that have no -- that have no weapon. They have no weapon, and they're being machine gun. They're being sniper from buildings. They're hitting the people with snipers right through the eyes. It's just a very evil ideology, and nobody's really seen anything like it.

As I said, even the fact that they've attacked all of their neighbors, and the neighbors weren't attacking. They thought they'd maybe send it out, or what -- they've drawn. They've hit Qatar, they've hit U.A.E., they've hit Saudi Arabia, they've hit Oman. They were helping this negotiate. They got hit. Everybody got hit because they're evil and they're bad. It's a bad seed and somebody had to do it.

And it should have been done sometime during a 47-year period, because so much death has been caused by them. So much unbelievable death, from Germany too. I mean, Germany has been hit. Everybody's been hit by them. It's an evil ideology. And I've never been -- look, I've done a lot of good things. So many people saying, thank you, thank you, thank you. You see it in the streets of Los Angeles. They have thousands of people.

I saw it the other day, pictures of Donald Trump. And I'm looking, I'm on the phone, probably talking to you. And I'm looking, and I see my picture. Say, oh no, it's another, you know, protest. I see my -- and then I started saying, boy, they were very friendly people. And then I saw a woman hugging the picture of me. I say, what's going on? And it turned out to be these are Iranian people that live in the United States, thousands and thousands.

You saw the rallies. And in New York too, they had a big rally by pictures all over the place. The fact is that people are happy what we did. And you could never -- and I've always said it, you could never have had true peace in the Middle East if Iran was allowed to go even beyond the nuclear. If Iran was allowed to have all the -- look at all the missiles they built. Lot have been now taken out by us, and a lot have been expended, but they have thousands of missiles in a fairly short period of time.

And I'll go, two things. The attack that we did, known as midnight hammer. Had we not done that, Iran would have had a very powerful nuclear weapon within one month. We did. It was great timing, but, you know, and you've been able to see that too. The other thing was Barack Hussein Obama made maybe the worst deal I've ever seen because he gave all power in the Middle East to Iran. He went the exact opposite way, and I terminated that.

If I didn't terminate that deal, they would be sitting with a massive nuclear weapon three years ago, which would have been used already on Israel at least and other countries also. And we wouldn't be talking about it right now. But if I didn't terminate the deal that Obama made, giving them everything, including plane loads of cash.

You remember the airplane flew over there. It was a Boeing 757. It was two of them, loaded. They took out all the seats. It was loaded with green cash, so much cash that you could -- it was in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C. They got all the cash from all the banks. They put it and they flew it to Iran. I never knew a president had that power. I'm going to maybe try it sometime, if it's OK.

I think I'm going to do it. They'll fly it somewhere. Nobody's ever seen anything like it. Two planes loaded from floor to ceiling, big planes, Boeing 757, taken over there and given cash. In addition to that he was giving them billions of dollars, but worse, he was giving them the right to have the path to a nuclear weapon. And that deal expired. A lot of people said, oh, you terminated. Well, it was going to be terminated anyway because it expired.

It gave them the right to have top of the line nuclear weapon. If they had because they're crazy, they're crazy, just like the people on my right during the State of the Union. I looked at him, I said, you're crazy. These people are crazy. And if they had a nuclear weapon, they would have used it. All right, how about one or two more?

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: Go ahead, please. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Talking about NATO that say, you just heard that the president is thinking about punishing Spain. And what I thought spontaneously on this and what changes will you do?

MERZ: Well, the answer on that is quite simple. We are trying to convince Spain to catch up with the 3 percent or 3.5 percent, which we agreed on in NATO. And as the president said, it's correct, Spain is the only one who is not willing to accept that. And we have trying to convince them that this is part of our common security, that we all have to comply with these numbers, and this is 3.5 for military and another 1.5 for our military infrastructure. So, Spain has to comply with that.

[12:20:00]

TRUMP: They've been very Spain has been very, very uncooperative, and so has U.K. Now the second one is shocking, but this is not the age of Churchill. I will say the U.K. has been very, very uncooperative with that stupid island that they have, that they gave away and took 100- year lease, having to do with, perhaps indigenous people claiming the island that never even saw the island before.

What's that all about? And they ruin relationships. It's a shame. It's -- and that country, U.K., and I love that country. I love it. My mother was born there. I love it. My mother was born there. My father was born -- he knows all about my father. My father was born there. So, you know, great places that you sort of automatically very, very feel warmly about. But the U.K., what they're doing with energy and what they're doing with immigration is horrible.

You have the North Sea. Somebody said yesterday, what would you do if you were the U.K.? Open up the North Sea. They got windmills all over the place that are ruining the country, ruining the landscapes, ruining the beautiful fields. Open up the North Sea. It's one of the greatest, think of it. They buy their energy from Norway, which gets the energy, the oil, from the North Sea.

So, Norway drills in the North Sea and sells it to U.K., and U.K. has a better part of the North Sea. Open up that. And number two, illegal immigration. They got to solve that problem. And I must say, that's not only U.K., that's other parts of the European Union. They have the same problem, immigration and energy. The energy is through the roof, the highest in the world. And the immigration was, I mean, you know, look, you have -- you have places where, in the U.K., you have a terrible mayor of London, terrible, he's an incompetent guy.

But you have Sharia courts. You don't have Sharia courts. You don't want Sharia courts. You have Sharia courts adjudicating law. So, it's very simple, immigration -- very importantly, immigration and energy. And you bring it back, otherwise you're not going to bring it back. OK.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: One more. Go ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Question for the chancellor.

TRUMP: Yes, please.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: To the Chancellor, Chancellor Merz, you've called for unity and joint force in this moment against Iran. What does that look like to you? And then, Mr. President, where is getting a deal with Russia and Ukraine on your priority list right now?

TRUMP: Chancellor, you go ahead.

MERZ: So, as I said, in Germany, the last two days, we are supporting the United States and Israel to get rid of this terrible terrorist regime. And we are looking forward to a day after and we have to talk about the strategy, what is -- what is following. After this, regime is away, and we have to strategize on this entire region, and we are having a high interest in common approach and common work and what we can do. And this is -- this is important, not just for the Americans. This is extremely important for Europe, and extremely important for Israel and their security. So, we are really looking forward to find ways how to deal about the day after.

TRUMP: And as far as Russia, Ukraine, where is it on my priority list? Very high. We thought that -- I thought it was going to be one of the easier ones. I've settled eight wars, and actually maybe one more than that, but minimum, eight wars, big ones, potential, India, Pakistan, big, big wars, it's very important, big ones.

I thought this was going to be much easier than it is. It's very -- this tremendous hatred between President Putin and President Zelenskyy, tremendous hatred. I've seen a lot of hatred in my life, but I think this is about top scale. I believe it's going to happen. Sometimes I blame one, sometimes I blame the other. I think it's going to happen, but it's high on my list, not in that it affects the United States so much because it's very far away.

[12:25:00]

But last week, I just see last week, and for the last four weeks, actually, 32,000 soldiers died, 32,000 and it's been averaging 25 to 30,000 soldiers a month have been dying in that stupid war. And I'd love to see it ended. It's the worst that there has been since World War II.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But you can't get a deal. What will that mean for you?

TRUMP: All you can do is do your best. You know, takes two to tango, and they have to get along. They have to be able to talk to each other. They hate each other a lot. That has an impact, you know. It really has an impact. It's bad for both. The sadness is that if the election weren't rigged, my election, that war would have never taken place. And you know what else wouldn't have taken place, allowing 25 million people to port through an open border. That wouldn't have taken place. A lot of things would have been different. But we're doing very well. And I think a big, big factor in this world and future factor is what we're doing right now with Iran. If we don't stop them, or if we didn't stop them, or if we didn't start, they've been decimated. But if we didn't do what we're doing right now, you would have had a nuclear war, and they would have taken out many countries, because, you know what, they're sick people, they're mentally ill, sick people. They're angry, they're crazy, they're sick. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you, press. Thank you. Thank you, guys.

DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Welcome to Inside Politics. I'm Dana Bash. And we have been listening to President Trump in the Oval Office during a meeting with the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. And the president gave his first -- not only did he have the first in person meeting with a foreign leader, that's part of what we just saw since launching war with Iran. It's the first time he answered reporters' questions in public since then.

President Trump said, the U.S. and Israeli forces have knocked out most of the Iranian Navy and Air Force. He also denied being pulled into the war by Israel, instead he said, it was the U.S. that forced Israel's hand. Now that is a different take from what we heard from his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio yesterday. We'll get more into that in a bit.

But as far as who should lead Iran right now? We heard a bit more from the president than we have heard in the past. He said, it obviously has to be a more moderate voice, but he hopes it perhaps it's somebody from the inside of Iran, rather than somebody who has been outside. Specifically, he was asked about the exiled son of the last Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi.

I want to now bring in Kristen Holmes, our senior White House correspondent, who is here on the set. Kristen, your takeaways?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I mean, the biggest one was that he completely undercut his secretary of state. And with reason, likely, given the fact that there was such an uproar over what we heard from Marco Rubio yesterday when he was standing there at the Hill. And he essentially said that we followed Israel into war because we knew that they were going to strike. And if anybody was to strike Iran, Iran would retaliate on U.S. assets. So, because Israel was going to strike, we had to go first.

Now President Trump obviously took issue with that, as did a lot of his MAGA supporters, saying that it's not true that if anything, he was the one who actually forced Israel's hand because he felt in his heart of hearts that Iran was going to strike first. Of course, we have all seen and have the reporting that there was no intel that indicated that Iran was actually going to strike first.

There were a couple other notable moments in that. As you said, you know, he confirmed additional strikes on Iranian leadership. One point he was asked, who do you think should lead? He said, well, most of them are dead now, so we're still looking into that. He also claimed that he had essentially unlimited munitions because of manufacturers operating under emergency authorities that he has, so all of the reporting that there is concern over munitions. He was clearly trying to hit back on that as well.

And then one of the things that he has started saying quite a bit and has become apparent, is that he and the administration, as well as neighboring countries of Iran and in the gulf region, were very surprised at the amount of force that Iran is using. I think that's really notable because clearly President Trump, you know, he reacts to things in real time.

You can tell that he genuinely and based on whether or not they didn't have the intel or they weren't focused on it, didn't understand or didn't know that they were going to hit back so hard to these gulf countries that President Trump has invested so much time in.

BASH: All right, stand by, because moments before President Trump spoke in the Oval Office, CNN teams reported, hearing new explosions in the skies over Abu Dhabi, Doha and Dubai. Across the region, the U.S. has shut down three U.S. embassies in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait after they were targeted by Iranian drones. The U.S. Embassy in Beirut is closed after Israel struck Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.

The state department is also warning Americans in more than a dozen countries to get out, but with many commercial airlines suspending flights.

[12:30:00]