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Inside Politics

Source: Trump Told Bondi He May Soon Replace Her As A.G.; Sources: EPA Chief And Ex-Rep. Lee Zeldin Could Replace Bondi; Oil Soars, Market Volatile After Trump Promises More Strikes; Trump Threatens To Bomb Iran Back To "Stone Age"; CNN Poll: 66 Percent Disapprove Of U.S. Military Action Against Iran; Trump Says War "Nearing Completion" But Also Signals Escalation; Police Release Video From Tiger Woods' Latest Rollover Crash. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired April 02, 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]

MANU RAJU, CNN ANCHOR, INSIDE POLITICS: Is President Trump about to tell Pam Bondi, you're fired? I'm Manu Raju in for Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines in Inside Politics.

We have breaking news. Another key cabinet member could be out. Less than a month after President Trump fire Kristi Noem. Attorney General, Pam Bondi spoke yesterday with the president. And sources tell CNN, he told her she will likely soon be replaced.

CNN's Kristen Holmes broke that story and joins us now live. So, Kristen, what are you hearing about how likely it is that Pam Bondi may be out?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, certainly right now, it seems incredibly likely. President Trump had been working the phones for several days, talking to allies, asking if he should fire Pam Bondi, but President Trump could always change his mind. And it is clear the fact that he has not fired her explicitly yet, shows you that there's a little bit of gray area.

And there's something else I want to point out here. It's the statement that President Trump put out last night about Pam Bondi when the story was coming to light. He said, Attorney General Pam Bondi is a wonderful person, and she is doing a good job. The reason why I note that is because President Trump himself put out that statement that is not something we saw when Kristi Noem was being replaced.

So there clearly is this gray area there about this conversation they had that one source described as tough, where they walked all the way up to being fired, but a White House official tells me that she has not been fired as of today. And she did attend the address that President Trump gave last night. She was there. She's actually in Florida, now sources tell us.

But it does appear that he's leaving some wiggle room to make a final decision. Of course, as we have reported, there are a number of people in the mix. Lee Zeldin, who is now currently running the EPA, has been a top contender, but nothing has been finalized as who that replacement might be.

RAJU: All right, Kristen Holmes, live from the White House. Thank you so much. My excellent panel reporter joins me now. Seung Min Kim, who covers the White House for The Associated Press. How -- what are you hearing from your sources about why she's on the ropes right now, because she really has done almost everything Trump has asked her to do. Why now?

SEUNG MIN KIM, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS: Well, there are two reasons. Obviously, we know the Epstein files has not been in the news for a little bit, or not in the main -- the main headlines for a little bit. But you have to remember her handling of the Epstein files, particularly earlier on in the president's term, where she would go out and say, the client list is on my desk. She would invite conservatives and show them, kind of the hint of the files that the Justice Department had.

And obviously that kind of completely turned when Congress, you know, forced the administration's hand and moved to release all of those files starting late last year. I mean, I have talked to, you know, allies of Bondi who like or close to her, but say, yeah, that wasn't the best way that she had handled the Epstein situation. So, there's that. But there's also this sentiment that she hasn't moved quickly enough to prosecute his political enemies.

We've seen this come out actually in Truth Social post, whether they were apparently posted or not. But we know that's kind of how the president has turned his justice department. This has been a continuing theme from the first administration, that he sees the Justice Department as his own personal lawyer, not necessarily an independent, you know, an independent sort of law enforcement entity for the entire country. And even with Pam Bondi being as loyal as she is to the president, it may not have been enough for president.

RAJU: Which is pretty -- which is remarkable, because your point is supposed to be independent do from politics, obviously. Politics always infects something of the Justice Department -- should both administrations, but this is a totally different, any sort of wall between the White House and the Justice Department have been gone.

Just as you mentioned this so-called errant tweets. There was that post from September of 20 -- 2025 where Donald Trump said, Pam, I've reviewed over 30 statements in posting that essentially same old story as last time, all talk, no action, nothing's being done. What about Comey, Adam "Shifty" Schiff, Leticia, they're all guilty as hell, but nothing is being done. He goes on to say, we can't delay any longer. It's killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice and indicted me five times. Over nothing. Justice must be served now, President DJT.

OK. I didn't do the Trump voice. I can't do the Trump voice, he knows that. But that was -- whether that was meant to be public or not. I mean, in the aftermath of that, there were prosecutions. There was an attempted prosecution of James Comey. There was Letitia James. And just a look at the people that that this Justice Department has gone after, the political foes of this president. This has been a pattern of this Justice Department.

Two of them have been overturned, the Comey and James ones. John Bolton, that's still pending. Several of those others are under investigation. But Jeff, that's the -- maybe that's what Trump is upset about. You see that middle column there, the people under investigation that they're not also indicted.

[12:05:00]

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, it's hard to find someone who's more loyal than Pam Bondi. There's just no question about it. I mean, there's no one in this town with a law license, probably who would be more loyal than her. However, I do think that changing House a little bit, if that's what happens with this on the Epstein files, it would perhaps show more competence and cohesion, but it doesn't change the underlying facts that the Epstein files and their contents remain a challenge for this administration, among some of the base. Firing the attorney general is not going to change any of that.

But I do kind of wonder if the president, after firing Kristi Noem, you know, if he is looking for a political perhaps by rearranging the furniture. Does he think that that's going to give him a little bit sort of more leverage or latitude with maybe some voters who are kind of frustrated with what they see, but in this midterm elections, they might be, you know, kind of a think that he's on the right course, if he's changing hands in the middle of stream here.

But look, I think the bottom line is, it doesn't change the facts of the Epstein case or any of those cases on the list there, no matter who they bring in, if it's Lee Zeldin who's one top contender or someone else.

RAJU: You have to have a prosecute, you can't just be someone who just --

(CROSSTALK)

ZELENY: You're right. And confirmation is still going to be a challenge in the middle of a midterm election campaign.

RAJU: And just speaking of the part, before you jump in, Nia, about the how loyal she was to the president. Remember this, House Judiciary Committee hearing from earlier this year where pretty much every time she was challenged by Democrats, she invoked Donald Trump's name and talked about how great he is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAM BONDI, ATTORNEY GENERAL: Have you apologized to President Trump? Have you apologized to President Trump? All of you who participated in those impeachment hearings against Donald Trump, you all should be apologizing. You sit here and you attack the president, and I am not going to have it. I'm not going to put up with it. He is the most transparent president in the nation's history. This guy has Trump derangement syndrome. He needs to get -- you're a failed politician. (END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: So not enough for the president.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, BLOOMBERG POLITICS & POLICY COLUMNIST AND CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yeah. I mean, this, of course, was for an audience of one. I mean, it was laughable in so many ways. It kind of went viral and, you know, became a sort of SNL skit because it was patently ridiculous. But it was also a show of her loyalty for this president. She would turn questions about Epstein into, well, isn't the stock market doing so well. The House Oversight Committee, of course, is interested in talking to her further about the Epstein files and perhaps pulling her out of the position of A.G. would forestall that. So that might be something that's happening here as well.

You know, listen, Trump has done this before, even with Noem, when people were speculating that she might be out. He would release these statements about how great she was and how she was instrumental in sealing the southern border. But then at some point, when he found her a landing place and found a replacement, her time was up. This seems like the sort of slow walk, or maybe a fast walk that Pam Bondi is on as well.

RAJU: It is Lee Zeldin, if he is -- he's the EPA administrator. He's a former New York congressman. He was a former state senator. He ran for governor of New York. He did not win that race. He's loyal to the president. He's not a prosecutor the way -- he's got -- he's a lawyer, he's got a law degree, I believe, but he's not, you know, he has not been a federal prosecutor. Will he change anything if he becomes the next attorney general? Will this be any different?

KIM: I mean, it's hard to see, because every -- at the end of the day, everything flows down from Donald Trump and what his -- and this is the same issue with the or the same dynamic with the Department of Homeland Security. Yes, Noem brought on a lot of this -- lot of issues upon herself. But in terms of actual policy and what they're trying to execute, it comes from the president.

So, you know, as Markwayne Mullin is executing the same policies that Kristi Noem did, so would any sort of successor to Pam Bondi, particularly when it comes to the Justice Department and what -- and what Donald Trump wants.

I will point out. I think Kristen's point earlier about kind of the difference between Noem and Bondi were really interesting. Let's not forget. Pam Bondi was actually with the president yesterday when he went up to the Supreme Court to watch those arguments over birthright citizenship. And she was also -- I believe she was also in at Cross Hall yesterday when he delivered a speech on Iran. So, she still remains kind of in that circle. It's again, I guess we're all kind of waiting to see if and when his patience runs out.

RAJU: Yeah. We'll say, we never know, we can learn about in Truth Social tomorrow, maybe later, maybe --

(CROSSTALK)

RAJU: All right, coming up. President Trump delivers a belated pitch for war in Iran. Will it rally Americans behind a war they increasingly opposed? Plus, more breaking news. CNN has obtained new bodycam video of Tiger Woods, including his field sobriety test and arrest for DUI.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:10:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

RAJU: If President Trump address the nation was intended to calm fears about an escalating war, it may have done the opposite. It's been a volatile morning for the markets. The Dow dropped, then recovered. Now, is down again, amid uncertainty about the conflict. Oil prices are now up around 11 percent today. You saw a big spike when the president was giving that address. Every $10 jump in oil means around 24 cent increase at gas, at the pump, where the cost is already above $4 a gallon.

[12:15:00]

Here's what President Trump said to drive that surge.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: We are on track to complete all of America's military objectives shortly, very shortly. We're going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks. We are going to bring them back to the stone ages, where they belong. Yet, if during this period of time, no deal is made, we have our eyes on key targets. If there is no deal, we are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: All right. Our excellent panel is back, including David Sanger with The New York Times, who has been, of course, dissecting this speech and thinking about it for this past 12 hours or so. So, David, what did the speech actually accomplish? And what questions do you still have about this conflict?

DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL & NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, first, clearly, what the president was trying to do was calm the markets, bring the price of oil down. That's a big political problem for him, as we've discussed here many times. It clearly didn't do that, not with oil up 11 percent for Brent crude. The second thing I think he was trying to do was answer this critique that he has shifted his objectives and that his plan isn't working.

He described a set of objectives were perfectly reasonable. They fit with some of what he has said in recent days. He didn't describe a plan for getting there. He said that he thought that the Strait of Hormuz would open naturally after the war ended. I can't imagine why the Iranians having discovered that they can charge millions of dollars per tanker going through, would let it open naturally.

He said, the morning, before the speech, he told Reuters, they didn't really care anymore about that uranium that was sitting under the mountains in Isfahan. Well, that's what this war was supposed to be all about. It was about getting that out of the country, so they couldn't build a weapon. He didn't reconcile any of that.

RAJU: And he also didn't say that there was a ceasefire. I mean, he said yesterday on Truth Social, there's a -- Iran wants a ceasefire, which they denied. And then he'd even mention that.

SANGER: He didn't mention that. He didn't mention in the--

RAJU: An end game, or any sort of end game.

SANGER: He didn't mention that they've been trying to get J.D. Vance to go to Islamabad and negotiate with the Iranians because the Iranians have not yet agreed to see him. And he didn't mention any inducements. You played the stone age line. But where was the line that says to the Iranian people, we see a future of democracy for you, American investment in your oil sector, and of a restoration of the kind of good relations we had in the 1950s when Donald Trump was growing up.

RAJU: Yeah. And this is the real political problem for Trump is because public opinion is going in the wrong direction. I mean this typically happens in times of war. The public usually does not get warmer to war, usually gets more sour to war. And that's what the CNN poll that just came out yesterday shows. 59 percent disapproved of the war, military action in Iran, at the start of the war, now it's 66 percent, up seven points.

HENDERSON: Yeah. And the real issue for Donald Trump is, whenever he would talk about affordability, his one sort of bragging point was that gasoline prices were fairly low. You know, he would say, they're almost under $2, right? That was even in a state of the union address. And now Americans can see the billboards right, when they are trying to go get gas, driving past the gas station, as I have done over the last couple of days, because I don't want to pay, you know, $4.09. I think it was the last I saw.

This is Americans reality at this point, and this is worrisome for him as he goes into the midterms, it's worrisome for his party. So now he has done all sorts of tweets and comments, some of which you can't really believe necessarily. And he has seen, you know, the price of crude go down and fluctuate in the stock market react.

And so that's what he was trying to do yesterday. It did not work. It was a speech, but he almost looked like he didn't necessarily want to give at the end. He was very all over the place. It was like, you know, his tweets back-to-back and one, you know, kind of long run on sentence. And so, we'll see what he does going forward but this is a real box he's in. RAJU: And the numbers are just bad. I'll cross the board, when it comes to Iran. There's good approval of his job as commander in chief, now it's at 33 percent compared to 41 percent in January of this year. That's a pretty sharp drop, eight points. And then if he does go that way of sending in ground troops, which he did not mention yesterday, about what his plans are. There so many questions. They're just 23 percent of Republicans support sending in ground troops into Iran.

ZELENY: Look, that would be a real red line for so many people. So, he did not mention that last night, which I'm not really surprised at that, he definitely made the case for why the U.S. is there, but it's a speech that I think would have resonated somewhat differently, had he given it five weeks ago. But I was struck by. He was clearly asking Americans for their patience, without using that word directly, by going through the history of how long wars were from World War I to World War II, to Vietnam 19 years to Iraq.

[12:20:00]

So basically, he's saying, you know, it's only been about five weeks or so, suck it up. But what he did not acknowledge is the economic pain directly that you were just talking about. So that is the political problem for him here, but it was striking. He was basically reading everything he has said to a national audience. We will see if a presidential primetime address can still have the ability to move people.

RAJU: It's clearly meant for people who are not following this very closely and he's been repeating the same lines that he's been saying for the last several weeks. But one line that got a lot of attention was something it didn't seem what the White House wanted out there publicly yesterday was at an Easter lunch where he was talking about money that could be spent at home and how -- maybe it's not being spent at home because it's being diverted from war. This is what the president said in response to that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I actually said to them, I said to Russell, don't send any money for daycare because the United States can't take care of daycare. That has to be up to a state. We can't take care of daycare. We're a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people. We're fighting wars. We can't take care of daycare.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: So, yes. So, we can't take care of daycare. A democratic ad written all over.

KIM: And I think he continued to talk about other programs such as healthcare and Medicaid.

(CROSSTALK)

KIM: And as you say, I feel like democratic ad makers are clipping -- like, save that, clip that, and are working on that -- working on using that, as we speak. Because it hits to the point of the discontent among so many voters about their feelings towards this war. Not only is it a conflict that they oppose, but they're one of the reasons why so many were attracted to Donald Trump because of his foreign policy views, was that he was pledging not to only really -- not like on extricate the U.S. from these so-called forever wars.

But to kind of spend that investment, spend those resources at home for voters who need it, the voters who want childcare, who want healthcare. And that message, which was made in a private lunch, the White House clearly did not mean to put that video out there because that video was taken off fairly quickly after people realized that it had been uploaded to the White House YouTube website. That he was being fairly candid about how he felt, you know, where the country was. So, I do think that that wasn't a great mess -- the Democrats are certainly sensing an opportunity with that clip there.

RAJU: I mean, David, because there's a big question which Trump did not address last night either, is how much is going to cost the American taxpayer? And there was talk of a possibly $200 billion war package being sent to Congress at some point. They have not officially proposed that yet. What are you hearing from your sources about whether they're going to actually move forward with that? And how much they may ask Congress to approve?

SANGER: So, first, I remember the great line that Bob Gaetz used to be the defense secretary, used to have, which is, our defense budget is, I know his time probably half a trillion dollars. He said, wars are extra. And in this case, it's a lot extra. They're probably burning through a billion to $2 billion a day. That's real money when you're comparing it to Medicare, Medicaid and daycare, right? You can buy a lot of daycare for a couple billion dollars a day.

The second is that there is this proposal around for a $200 billion supplemental just to go pay for the war and resupplying our arsenal, which we definitely need to. But the big one is the one they're not even discussing, which is that the president wants to increase the defense budget by more than 50 percent to $1.5 trillion, OK, right now it's just under a trillion. And they've announced the number, but they haven't announced what that's paying for.

RAJU: Yeah.

SANGER: And, you know, even in Washington, half a trillion dollars can get people's attention.

RAJU: Yes. So, use a lot of money even in Washington, no question about that. All right, coming up for us. Breaking news, CNN has obtained new bodycam video of Tiger Woods and police in the moments after his crash, leading up to his DUI arrest. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:25:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) RAJU: The following breaking news are getting more bodycam footage from Tiger Woods' arrest after the rollover crash last week. The video obtained by CNN affiliate WPBF shows Woods on one knee after the crash, talking to a first responder. Woods was charged with driving under the influence, but he pleaded not guilty, according to court documents. Following the crash, a sheriff's deputy described Woods as having blood shot, glass he eyes with, quote, extremely dilated pupils.

CNN's Isabel Rosales is following their story and joins me now live. So, Isabel, we've just obtained the bodycam video of Woods, taking a field sobriety test and then later being arrested and searched. What did you find?

ISABEL ROSALES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And it's important to know, Manu, that this is actually a series of videos that are being released by the Martin County Sheriff's Office. We obtained two of them so far from our CNN affiliate, WPBF. We see the moments where Woods is kneeling down on the ground, one knee up, and it's right after the crash. We see his Land Rover onto the side of the roadway. Luckily, nobody was hurt there.

And then, we see what is actually detailed out in the affidavit that we just obtained.

[12:30:00]