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Inside Politics

Trump Ceasefire Plan Collides With Chaos On The Ground; Netanyahu Says Israel Will Begin Direct Talks With Lebanon; Some Trump Allies Warn War Can't End Without Regime Change; Inflation Stayed Stubbornly High In Weeks Before War Began; Dozens Of Democrats Push For Impeachment On 25th Amendment; Artemis II Crew Prepares To Return To Earth. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired April 09, 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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ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORT ANCHOR: What time did you get in line?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was 5:15 something.

SCHOLES: 5:15. What are you -- what are you trying to do when you get in the gift shop?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ah, Noem, of course.

SCHOLES: Why did you get here so early?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Shopping for Noem.

SCHOLES: You want the Noem, right?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Of course, yes.

SCHOLES: Are you getting nervous now that the line has stopped?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, very.

SCHOLES: You think you're going to get one still because the lines' getting longer. You think they're going to be gone?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yeah, I think they're being gone.

SCHOLES: What do you think the odds of getting a gnome at this point?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, I'd say slim to none.

SCHOLES: Do you feel like you've won the masters walking out with this guy?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Absolutely.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We feel successful.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tired is what we feel.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I didn't get here early enough. That's OK though. Yeah, I mean, we got to go to hollow ground. So, how much can you complain, right?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Only 400 bucks on Facebook. We'll get one maybe.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHOLES: Everybody wants to know guys and the people's faces and the big smiles they have when they get one. It's pretty great.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR, THE SITUATION ROOM: All right. Andy Scholes, thanks so much.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN CO-ANCHOR, THE SITUATION ROOM: And assembly has been taking golf lessons in the last few months. I can relate to those little kids.

BROWN: You can, Wolf. You're coming quite a pro.

BLITZER: Oh yeah. Thanks very much for joining us this morning.

BROWN: Inside Politics with our friend and colleague, Dana Bash, starts right now.

DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Do the U.S. and Iran have a deal or just smoke and mirrors? I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines at Inside Politics.

We start with a ceasefire that's looking increasingly shaky. Why? Iran still has a grip on the Strait of Hormuz amid an increasingly precarious ceasefire, made even more so by Israel's continued bombing of Hezbollah in Lebanon, which Iran says, it thought would stop. But then moments ago, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said he would open direct negotiations with Lebanon, though he didn't promise to end the Israeli bombardment.

Here's how my colleagues put it in a new CNN report this morning. Quote, Trump's sudden ceasefire declaration triggered immediate relief across global financial markets. But the announcement also fueled more chaos and confusion over what Trump and Iran had actually agreed to, including whether the U.S. had secured one of its main objectives, opening the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has effectively closed for the past month, in response to U.S.-Israeli operations, choking off a main artery for global energy and tanking markets.

Now the Trump administration continues to deny the reality, which is that the Strait is closed. The administration says it's open, but here's what a top official in the U.A.E. bluntly said. Part of that quote is as follows. This moment requires clarity. So, let's be clear. The Strait of Hormuz is not open. Access is being restricted, conditioned and controlled. I'm joined by a terrific group of reporters here with me now. Tyler, you cover the White House, day in and day out. What is your sense of -- and I know you've done a lot of reporting of how we got to this ceasefire. But what is your sense of where we are right now?

TYLER PAGER, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: I mean, I think there is a lot of lack of clarity to put it mildly, as you said, Dana, about what the exact situation is in the region. There was a clear desire for an off ramp to move away from this ending civilization threat that Donald Trump issued early this week. And so, they found an off ramp, but the details remain murky, and the details remain disputed.

And I think that is the challenge that this administration is facing and the entire region and world, as they try to figure out, is the Strait going to be reopened. It's clearly not opened, as you just read from that U.A.E. official, in the way that people had hoped and expected it to be. But I think there is some hope that they can minimize the bombing aspect of this.

Have Vice President Vance lead this delegation to Islamabad this weekend and try to work out the details. And of course, the Strait of Hormuz is going to be top of that list. But Dana, I think there's frustration and confusion in the White House throughout Washington and foreign capitals around the world about what the actual terms of this are. And as we've reported, there's disagreement about what terms they're even discussing.

BASH: No, very much so. Let's talk about what we just learned in the last few minutes, which is that the Israeli prime minister says that they're going to have direct negotiations with Lebanon. I mean, it's obvious that part of the big concern was -- isn't just on the U.S. side and Israeli side, the Strait of Hormuz, but on the Iranian side about the fact that Israel has still really been, at least up until Wednesday, bombing the Hezbollah targets. It says are inside Lebanon. And obviously, they're trying to calm this down before any talks officially start. That's supposed to happen in a couple of days.

LIZ GOODWIN, NATIONAL POLITICS REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: Yeah. The Lebanon situation is pretty confusing at the moment because you have the prime minister saying, OK, we're going to open direct talks with them. Vice President Vance yesterday said something along the lines of, you know, maybe Israel will ease up on Lebanon just to give us this this moment to negotiate here, but the prime minister also said there's no ceasefire. So, it's unclear to me if this is solving the central issue here, which is that Iran thinks Lebanon is part of the ceasefire and Israel does not.

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BASH: And you mentioned what the vice president said as he was leaving Budapest, where he was campaigning for Viktor Orban. Let's listen specifically to what he said that really gives us a window into how quickly this came about and how it wasn't totally nailed down.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT: I think this comes from a legitimate misunderstanding. I think the Iranians thought that the ceasefire included Lebanon, and it just didn't. The Israelis, as I understand it, again, I'm supposed to get a fuller report when I get on the plane. Have actually offered to be, frankly, to check themselves a little bit in Lebanon because they want to make sure that our negotiation is successful.

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BASH: Now, another way to look at it, Steven, is that maybe everybody kind of understood what it meant. But you know, in the case of Israel, why not take a little bit more time and have the ability to hit more targets while they actually try to finalize what the U.S. certainly hopes will be a final agreement, not just a ceasefire.

STEPHEN COLLINSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICS REPORTER: Yeah. There is no sense that Israel is checking itself. If you look at the intensity of the attacks, yesterday they were among the most dangerous and far reaching and caused the most casualties since the start of this phase of the war. What Israel is doing in Lebanon is going after Hezbollah, which is a pro-Iranian militia.

So, although it's opening talks with the Lebanese government, that's not necessarily going to change the equation here because Hezbollah almost exists as a squatter in Lebanon. So, it's perhaps a small concession from the Israelis, but it's not going to change the dynamic from the Iranian point of view.

Let's just look at the good news. The good news is Iran isn't sending missiles into Gulf states today. The U.S. and Israel aren't attacking Iran. That suggests that at least Iran and the U.S. want to get to the weekend for these talks. But the -- I think it would be a major achievement if those talks can create a clarification of just what the ceasefire is about.

The idea that we could get any long-term agreement on nuclear issues the Strait of Hormuz, that seems completely fanciful and that's going to be a very long-term proposition. And the question is, does the White House have the patience for this? But it's not, so far demonstrated in its previous talks with Iran.

BASH: Yeah. I mean, talks with Iran historically don't take days. They take weeks, months, even, even longer. I want to talk a little bit about the pressures, the political pressures on the president. Obviously, you know, number one for him and for people in the world is the economic pressures that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has caused. And then there are the questions of whether he is following through on his promise to not be a wartime president and to try to avoid that.

So, we've talked a lot on this show about the pressures from sort of the Tucker Carlson and the Megyn Kelly's of the world, not as much about those coming from the other sort of wing, if you will, of the MAGA universe, more the traditional Republican, hawkish universe.

Let's play Mark Levin, who is a prominent podcaster, talk show host and Senator Lindsey Graham.

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MARK LEVIN, FOX HOST: They're not going to go away if there's not regime change. And we're going to have to figure out, and it's not going to be easy, how to keep our, you know, foot on their throat.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC) (voiceover): We're very close to finishing this regime off. Let's finish them off if they don't do a good deal.

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PAGER: Yeah. Then those are influential voices in the president's ear. He frequently truths about Mark Levin. He is an avid watcher of his shows, and we know that Lindsey Graham is a close ally of the president, often talks with him -- and talks to him quite often. So, it's important to understand that there are a lot of different pressure points on the president.

But another faction of the Republican Party that is concerned about the prolonged economic crisis that could result from the closure of the Strait is the more moderate Republicans who are running in campaigns in November, who face long odds for a whole host of reasons, mid-terms and for our incumbent party -- incumbent president parties often don't go well.

Polling shows that Trump is under water, and Democrats see feel that they are going to be able to seize the moment and take back the House. That is a concern for Republicans, that is a concern for Donald Trump. And I think we're even seeing it bleed into some belief among Democrats that there's a real path, a narrow one, but a real one to taking back the Senate.

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And so, I think the political pressures beyond the sort of prominent voices for and against conflict with Iran are those of moderate Republicans running in tough reelection races, and also voters who are feeling the pinch at the pump, at the grocery store and across the board as prices continued to rise because of the economic calamity that is caused by the closure of the Strait.

BASH: And Steven, I want to put something on the screen that might have understandably gotten lost and so much going on. Also, it's because the president put it on his social media platform at 11:46 pm last night. It's, you know, all about Iran and the agreement and so forth. But I want you to look at the very end there. He says, in the meantime, our great military is loading up and resting, looking forward, actually, to its next conquest.

COLLINSON: Yeah. I'm not sure exactly what that's referring to. Is it referring to a potential resumption of the war in the Middle East? Is it -- is he talking about something else? Is he talking about Cuba? Who knows? I think it fits into the great strategic confusion that's taking place. You know, unless you're one of Donald Trump's supporters, it's difficult to say that this has been a great success so far. And that gets to the politics of this.

I've always thought there's a differentiation between MAGA supporters and America First supporters, which I think is a slightly wider coalition. That is where the stress is happening in the Republican Party. It's really interesting to listen to conservative media. We've not heard these splits between personalities ever during the Trump era. And I don't necessarily think there's much appetite in the country for this attempted conquest, if you like, let alone a new one, some -- somewhere in the future when the dust from this one hasn't even settled.

BASH: All right, everybody standby. Coming up, the 25th amendment. There is chatter, even some Democrats pushing for this very unlikely scenario. Is it a political mistake? Plus, Kara Swisher is testing the limits of longevity and shows us what works.

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BASH: We don't yet know what the longer-term economic impact of the war in Iran will be. But today, we did get new data showing trouble piling up for the U.S. economy in the weeks before the war began. An important measure of inflation showed core prices rose 0.4 percent in February and 3 percent from a year earlier. Both numbers are higher than the Fed likes to see, which makes it less likely they will cut interest rates. And the GDP report showed the U.S. economy grew less between October and December than previously reported, down to just 0.5 percent.

My smart panel is back now. We were talking about those Republicans on the ballot this year. This was before the war.

GOODWIN: Yes. This is really bad news for people who are trying to keep their seat in the fall. And there is pressure internally on Trump and the administration to bring this war to -- the conflict to an end because of the economic impacts, the Strait of Hormuz remaining open now is -- remaining closed now or nearly closed now as part of what's driving a lot of this anxiety because gas prices is just something that people see every day.

But these other effects, like mortgage rates going up, inflation still staying high, all of those numbers, a lot of Republicans were really hoping they would get better by the fall and it's hard for them to run on -- we're making your lives better if these numbers don't change.

BASH: Yeah. And meanwhile, the Democrats are trying to figure out what their pressure points are in addition to just the economy and just kind of let it happen and have people feel what they feel. For example, this morning in the House, the Democrats tried to push a war powers resolution. They didn't get recognized by the Republicans in control, which is not a surprise. Here's what Hakeem Jeffries said this morning about this. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY): We're going to make sure that we provide our Republican colleagues with every single opportunity to do the right thing on behalf of the American people, which means bringing an immediate end to Donald Trump's reckless and costly failed war of choice against Iran. We're going to successfully move a war powers resolution. All we need are a handful of Republicans. Two have already joined us. We just need one or two more.

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BASH: Tyler?

PAGER: I mean, what the Democrats are trying to seize on is that polling shows a broad majority of Americans are opposed to this conflict, and that's a bipartisan issue. And so, Democrats are trying to show the American people that they stand with them in their opposition to that. But I think the economy is really going to be the centerpiece of the pitch for voters. And we saw that the Trump administration, the Trump White House, has tried to make affordability their central pitch. We've seen this in elections for many decades, going back, the famous phrase, it's the economy, stupid.

And I think that, you know, the Karoline Leavitt announced yesterday, the president is going to travel next week to Nevada and Arizona to talk about economic progress under his administration. Even before the war started, there was concerns within the Republican Party about the administration's handling of the economy and voters' dissatisfaction with it.

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So, this is an uphill battle. And one that just got steeper because of it. And the numbers you saw that you showed, Dana, are before the war. It has only gotten worse. And economic analysts, I've talked to an expert, say we're not even seeing the full effect yet because of the way that the supply chain works. It's only going to continue to get worse for voters across the country.

BASH: And then the question continues to be what Democrats do. And right now, there are about 80 -- little more than 80 Democrats who have said publicly that the 25th Amendment should be invoked, which obviously they have no power over. And it is to use the word of the week fantastical to think that the president's own cabinet will do that, or they've also said, maybe impeachment, which has its own political drawbacks, as we've seen historically.

COLLINSON: Yeah. The idea that impeachment would be a serious option, whatever people think about the president's conduct is somewhat unlikely. Look at the last two times, it was tried with President Trump. It only ended up helping him politically. It's something Democrats can say to challenge the anger in their base, but unless there are, you know, enough Republican senators in the Senate who are willing to impeach Trump, and I don't think that's the case, it's, you know, not a smart political move if the Democrats get back the House. But I think it is interesting. Do Democrats have to come up with their own message here? Polls show that Americans are not much more willing to listen to Democrats than they are willing to listen to Republicans. Is it just coasting towards an election they hope to win? Maybe that works in the mid-terms. I don't think it would work in 2028.

BASH: Yeah. All right, everybody standby, still ahead. The Artemis II astronauts prepare for the most dangerous part of their mission, coming home.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Gosh, I haven't even begun to process what we've been through. We've still got two more days. And riding a fireball through the atmosphere is profound as well.

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BASH: To the moon and back. The four Artemis II astronauts who traveled further into space than any other humans, are just hours away from the most dangerous part of their mission, returning to Earth. The capsule will pierce through the Earth's atmosphere at 25,000 miles per hour, or traveling seven miles per second, which is the equivalent of 30 times the speed of sound. It generates an incredible amount of heat around the capsule, and it has to withstand temperatures around 5000 degrees Fahrenheit.

CNN's Randi Kaye is live at Mission Control at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Randi, reentry does not sound like something that is, well, none of this is something that I think I could handle, but especially reentry.

RANDI KAYE, CNN ANCHOR & NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: No. There's certainly a lot of pressure on the team here, and certainly on pilot Victor Glover, who says he's prepared for it. But this is a tricky, tricky part of the mission. There is a special coating on the bottom of the spacecraft. It's made of what they call avcoat material, and it really is supposed to protect the capsule and the astronauts from that extreme heat. It's supposed to burn off gradually.

But Dana, with Artemis I, back in 2022 that was an uncrewed mission, that didn't work so well, and the heat shield actually had big chunks that broke off. There was the -- there were some gasses that built up and it caused a lot of pressure and cracking. So, there's a lot -- a lot to be concerned about, of course, about the reentry and the heat shield. Now, NASA is expressing confidence, of course, but Victor Glover was asked about it, and here's what he had to say during a press conference with the media last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) VICTOR GLOVER, ARTEMIS II ASTRONAUT: The entry thing, I'll be honest and say, I've actually been thinking about entry since April 3, 2023, when we got assigned to this mission. And one of the first press conferences, we were asked, what are we looking forward to? And I said, splash down. And it's kind of humorous, but it's literal as well, that we have to get back. There's so much data that you've seen already, but all the good stuff is coming back with us. There's so many more pictures, so many more stories.

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KAYE: Maximum velocity during reentry, Dana, is 35,000 feet per second, pretty fast.

BASH: Just a regular day for Randi Kaye, talking to the commander of Artemis in space. They just got their wakeup call, Randi, lonesome drifter by Charley Crockett, is what they heard. What are they doing in this last full day in space?

KAYE: Well, yesterday was their last day to exercise, so they have to start sort of packing everything up. So, they're going to rearrange the capsule, you know, sort of reset the deck chairs. It was set a certain way it launched. It has to be reset for reentry. So, they'll do that. They're also going to do what's called a burn later tonight, where they make sure that the capsule is on the right trajectory and on the right path to get home safely. So those are two really important things that they need to do today.

BASH: Randi, thank you so much. Appreciate it. And coming up. President Trump says NATO was tested and failed. I'll speak to a former U.S. NATO commander, General David Petraeus, next.

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