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Trump To Axios: I Must Be Involved In Picking New Iranian Leader; Trump Advisers Work To Avoid Political Nightmare On Iran; White House Posts Hype Video Of Iran Strikes With Video Game Clips; Paxton On Trump's Endorsement Ultimatum: "I'm Staying In This Race". Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired March 05, 2026 - 12:00   ET

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

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DANA BASH, CNN HOST: The Iranian war intensifies across the Gulf and unanswered questions multiple.

I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines at Inside Politics.

Day six of the war with Iran, and the U.S. and Israel continue to pound targets in Iran, which is launching fresh strikes of its own against U.S. allies in the region. We're also seeing more evacuation flights from the Middle East. The State Department says 20,000 people have returned to the U.S. since the war began.

A big development here in Washington is that President Trump is demanding that he be personally involved in selecting Iran's next leader. It was a brand-new interview that the president did with our CNN analyst Barak Ravid of Axios. The president said he must personally be involved in selecting Iran's next leader, and that choosing the son of the late supreme leader is unacceptable to him.

Quote, they are wasting their time. Khamenei son is a lightweight. I have to be involved in the appointment just like Delcy Rodriguez in Venezuela. Khamenei son is unacceptable to me. We want someone that will bring harmony and peace to Iran.

I want to get straight to CNN's chief international security correspondent, Nick Paton Walsh, who is live in Tel Aviv. What do you make of those comments, Nick?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: I think it's interesting because it potentially informs us as to one of the reasons, perhaps, that the process of selecting the successor to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been slow. There have been suggestions we might be seeing infighting internally, despite a lot of the publicity that was given around the succession plans, Khamenei put in in the event of his death.

We are still day five now, not clear who is in charge of Iran. But I think there's also possibly here, particularly with the comparisons to Venezuela, a slight insight as to the president's grasp of how hard line, a lot of what he's dealing with Iran indeed is towards the United States or perhaps lack of grass. It's a totally different situation to Venezuela, where he is clearly admitting here that they had a direct influence on the choice of Maduro -- Nicolas Maduro, the former president's deputy to take over the job. It was a swift move keeping the government in place. What we're dealing with here, though, is essentially appointing a hardline cleric in a position for leading an Islamic revolution.

A lot of the fundamental original beliefs were resistant to the American presence in the region, and indeed to Israel here as well. So, the concept that the job of supreme leader can be one that the American president has a role in selecting, I think, is somewhat complex. Certainly, it will be very hard for many of the 88 senior clerics in the Assembly of Experts who have met twice, seemingly dodging Israeli air strikes over past days.

The results of those meetings as yet unclear, very hard to imagine them accepting it. But still here we have a slight glimmer of a political compromise, perhaps. And one of the interesting things President Trump said in that article is they didn't have to come back in five years from now and do this all over again.

Now, the tone of that statement, to some degree, possibly suggests that now the president's mindset has gone from the kinetics of military action here, which still continue unabated, very aggressively and brutally inside of Iran, where this morning, a human rights group based in the United States said the death toll had reached 1100, and we've just heard of the 13th wave of Israeli strikes against targets inside the country.

Now that perhaps the president is talking about the possibility of finding a leader in Iran that they could ultimately do business with. It is ideologically something that's going to cause some assaults, total incompatibility to the nature of the Islamic Revolution, the regime inside Iran. And so, this is both -- something of a non- starter, but also at the same time, perhaps a suggestion that the president's mindset is thinking about compromise.

BASH: Explained only the way you can explain it. Nick Paton Walsh, thank you so much for that. I really appreciate it. And here at the table, we have some terrific reporters. David Sanger is one of them. So, David, there are -- there's so many ways to unpack this new statement from the president.

First is, one of the things that that Nick said, which is that the president's comparison to what happened in Venezuela, which he does deem as a success, even though the Maduro regime is still there. Delcy Rodriguez, it was part of the Maduro regime, but they feel like, you know, they're doing business with her. And making that comparison to Iran, which as Nick just described, could not be more different for a multitude of reasons.

And then the other part of what's interesting about the president's statement is, as we see the sort of evolution of the reasons for war, regime change has kind of fallen by the wayside, and now you're seeing the president bring that back into the conversation.

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DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICS & NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: It's stunning on several fronts. So, first of all, when the Iranians hear this, the first thing they're going to think is 1953, when the United States helped organize a coup to make sure that the British could still have access to oil in Iran. And installed a leader, the Shah, who ultimately got overthrown in the 1979 revolution. So, you have the possibility here of alienating some of the people who really want to see this government gone, but don't want the United States picking the leader. I think how we react when we hear about the possibility of foreign interference in our elections, right?

Second problem here is the president has been talking about Venezuela as his model here. He said it to the times in an interview on Sunday, that was the moment when he said he had three candidates in mind, and then later on, said that many of them had been killed. But the fact of the matter is, as you just heard before from Nick is the danger of false analogy here is huge.

First of all, it's country of 90 million people. So, it's, you know, nearly three times the size of Venezuela. But the complexity of dealing with both the clerical leadership and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, you're not going to be able to keep them in place the way you could keep the Venezuelan government in place.

BASH: And that's really, really important because what happened in 1979 and has been in place for 47 years, is a government that is run by -- and their North Star is their ideology and their faith, and their faith and the way that they see their faith, which is, you know, an extreme view of it, for sure.

And that is not something that happened in Venezuela, and that is hard for an American president to penetrate and say, OK, I want, you know, X or Y leader in there as part of the current mindset versus the idea of just totally getting rid of the regime and somehow maybe it's Utopia finding a way to get a more democratic leader in there.

SANGER: Look, our experiments with regime change in the past and us controlling it have been difficult. We've tried in Iraq with more than 100,000 troops on the ground. Here, we don't want to have any troops on the ground and do it by remote control. So that's one problem, I think, with this. I think, the second problem with it is that you've got sort of three major options here of how we may get a new government. One possibility is that people rise up, as the president suggested on Saturday, but they have no organization and no guns. That's a problem.

The second is, the best you might hope for would be sort of Islamic state 2.0 that is a little bit less hardline and more amenable to dealing with the U.S. and more pragmatic, maybe on the nuclear program and so forth, that might be the best outcome. And then there's the big possibility that you get a more hardline government that actually goes out and shoots more people on the streets.

BASH: And then there's the question, many, many questions about sort of how we got here and what went into the president's decision making, which is still very relevant because of the way that they're kind of feeling their way on how this war is going and what constitutes an end. Karoline Leavitt, yesterday at the briefing, first said the president had a good feeling about it, that this was the right time. And then she said this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: The president had a feeling again, based on fact that Iran was going to strike the United States, was going to strike our assets in the region, and he made a determination to launch operation epic fury based on all of those reasons.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Had a feeling, and then she said later, a feeling based on fact.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: Right. Whatever that fact may have been that drove said feeling or feelings plural has not necessarily been conveyed in the briefings that have been given on Capitol Hill in a classified manner, at least as far as we have -- the sources I've talked to that have been involved in those briefings. Just being clear, we're not going to talk about classified information, but there was nothing specific that we saw that would back up an imminent threat to U.S. forces.

I think that a couple of things can be true here at the same time and it's important to take that into context. One, the opportunity itself, with the strike, the joint strike with the Israelis to take out the leadership, presented itself was very real. It was driven by U.S. intelligence.

[12:10:00]

Two, Iran is at a weaker point right now than it has ever been over the course of the last several decades. At the same time, it was once again boosting its ballistic missile stocks or its attempts to reinforce its capability there. And the U.S. saw an opportunity at the same time where if Israel decided to strike unilaterally, U.S. forces would absolutely be targeted as a response. But none of those things necessarily precipitate an imminent threat in that exact moment.

As to the feeling, I actually think that these things all connect with Barak's reporting, David's reporting on Venezuela. I have heard repeatedly, and at first didn't really take it that seriously, but that the run the president is on in foreign policy contributed heavily to the, hey, I'm hot. Let's keep going. Let's keep going. And I think the risk in that could probably fill up a history book on some level at some point.

But just real quick, let me translate what MPW and David are trying to diplomatically analyze. It's not tethered to reality any comparative to Venezuela, their leadership, their types of government, the hemispheric location, any of that type of stuff. And I think that's right now where a lot of people are trying to grasp around for what the reality is. BASH: Yeah. And this whole concept of his feeling is, in part, I think, reacting to some great reporting that you had, David, and your colleagues about Trump's determination to cut your bureaucracy, reduce his advisors to a very small leak proof few, and trust his instinct over intelligence briefings.

And our colleague here at CNN, Adam Cancryn, also had the following talking about sort of perhaps, why we got into this situation where there was a little bit of chaos on White House messaging. Trump officials in the lead up to the weekend strikes, warned the president that striking Iran could generate unpredictable political repercussions, stressing that it was difficult to pinpoint how the offensive would play out over time. That's according to people familiar with the matter.

CARL HULSE, CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: I don't think he needed to be an expert to know that this is going to be unpredictable and how it's going to play out, right? I think we can all stipulate that Iran is not Venezuela, and I think this latest statement from the president pretty mind boggling. I think we can agree with that. And it's going to cause us some problems on Capitol Hill because they have spent days trying to roll back the idea of regime change. That's not what we're here, imminent threat.

And now the president is saying, you know, as the House gets ready to vote this afternoon, that I want to pick the next leader of Iran. And I think, you know, people are going to look at that and go, what are we really up to in Iran. I think the idea that there's no seeming game plan for an end to this is also making people up there very nervous.

BASH: All right, stand by, Nia. We're going to sneak in a quick break. A lot more to discuss on what the president said and where we might be going in Iran.

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BASH: We have a brand new look inside Iran. Right now, CNN correspondent Fred Pleitgen is there with his photojournalist Claudia Otto, and they're making a very long drive to Tehran. CNN is the first U.S. network in the country since the start of the war. It's important to note that CNN is operating in Iran only with the permission from the government.

Just moments to go, Fred filed this brand new report.

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FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We're making fairly good progress towards Tehran. It is a very, very long drive, though. Some things that we are seeing, we already went past one place where apparently there had just been an air strike. There was thick, black smoke billowing over one place. So, it seemed like a fairly fresh air strike, also some destroyed buildings that we saw from our vantage point as we were driving past.

The other thing that I would also say is that there are definitely more checkpoints than usual. We did see checkpoints with fairly heavily armed security personnel. Other than that, though, it seems as though things are going on, and we certainly don't see any sign of order collapsing here.

Taking a quick break for a coffee along the way, we've been driving for several hours. There's a couple of things that we've noticed. Number one, is that, first of all, all the shops are open. All the shops are really well stocked, even with fresh things like, for instance, fruits and vegetables, coffee obviously also available as well, and then also the gas stations. There's no long lines as gas stations. Fuel seems readily available, and you just don't see any sort of degree of panic anywhere.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Thank you, Fred, for filing that report. Back here at the table, I want to turn to the way that the White House is trying to sort of set the narrative on what's going on there. And they're doing it in this example that I'm going to play by reaching out to a very important, very big part of the population, including and especially those, I think that they consider their base gamers.

But what the White House did was they released a video, combining real footage from the real war with a video game, part of what's a very familiar video game known as Call of Duty.

(VIDEO PLAYING)

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BASH: We're winning this fight. And Nia, the Washington Post was reporting on this, and you know, just sort of stated the fact that the White House is mixing real footage with a kill streak animation from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III. And the White House Communications Director Steven Cheung responded, W's in the chat, boys, which is a gaming term, when people are gaming and they -- and they do well, they put, you know, W win in the chat.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, BLOOMBERG POLITICS & POLICY COLUMNIST: Listen, I mean, I think this is in keeping with the way Pete Hegseth is also talking about the war. He, of course, had a press conference yesterday talking about utter dominance, talking about the war, liking it to a football game. I think it was one of the analogies that he used. And it's part of the sort of the bro culture that Donald Trump used to win.

It's part of Pete Hegseth, why he's the secretary of war, and why it's not the -- you know, the Department of Defense anymore. So, it's part of the selling of the war, and we'll see if it's effective. I mean, I think the questions that everybody has is, what happens after the sort of dominance. We've reported on these wars over the last many years, the shock and awe part of it is always part of the initial selling of it, the utter dominance of the American military, best military ever in the history of the world. We get that, right?

And you also could see that the White House obviously understands media, understands social media. This is a president who is watching the coverage of this war on his television set every day and trying to program it, right? And so, I think that that's part of it. It's part of why they were so high on the sinking of that naval vessel, which apparently was just sort of a ceremonial vessel and hyping that up.

So, listen, this is a White House that is good at the hype. I think, listen, if you were part of the families who have lost Americans, six Americans have died. This is quite distasteful to liken a war to a video game. Because, you know, these are soldiers' lives who are at risk and sort of liken them to a football game or a video game. I think is offensive to a lot of people.

SANGER: Well, right now we know that six Americans have died. The Iranians say 1100 Iranian have died. We have no way of judging that. But I've never seen anything like this that sort of takes the real footage and tries to basically suggest this is a game. There is nothing more serious that states do than use force, and particularly in urban areas where civilians are going to die. We know that school children died in the one of the first strikes.

We don't know who actually did that strike, whether it was the Israelis or the U.S., and the administration doesn't seem eager, particularly, to tell us that. It does fit in and it also fits in with Secretary Hegseth says criticism of the press for making too much of the casualties.

BASH: Yeah. Which -- and I think everybody would agree with this, nobody is making too much of casualties. People who are reporting on it are honoring their service in giving the ultimate sacrifice, not doing so to offend President Trump, it's about the soldiers, not the commanders.

SANGER: And his chairman of the joint chiefs opened his statement after Hegseth says, talking about the casualties by name.

BASH: All right, stand by. Coming up. President Trump says he will decide which Republican Senate candidate stays on the ballot in the state of Texas. When will he do that? And the big question is, will voters rally behind that pick?

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BASH: President Trump is trying to control the Republican Senate race in Texas, at least. He says that he is a GOP -- well, he didn't say he's a GOP king maker. He is a GOP king maker. We know that, and he knows that, which is why he said he's going to decide whether incumbent Senator John Cornyn or Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton will face the Democrat who was elected in primaries this week, James Talarico. We're still waiting for the president's endorsement, but Ken Paxton says, it won't change his plans.

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KEN PAXTON (R) TEXAS SENATE CANDIDATE (voiceover): I'm staying in this race. I owe it to the people of Texas. I've spent a year of my life campaigning through -- against John Cornyn because John has not represented the people of Texas. Well, everything that Trump stood for John Cornyn thought, but he has -- it was a big help to Joe Biden. The people of Texas, at least, the Republicans would like something different.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Carl Hulse, Ken Paxton, just put out something else on Twitter where he said that if the Senate passes the SAVE Act, meaning a Voting Rights Act that they're -- not voting rights, it's a --

SANGER: Voter ID.

BASH: Voter ID Act that -- that will be the thing that will make him drop out of the race. It may be a coincidence that the president has been putting on his social media feed all day, information about the SAVE Act. He also said no one has been loyal -- more loyal to Donald Trump than me. Fighting the stolen election, so on and so forth.

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