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Trump On NATO: "They Were Tested And They Failed"; Gen. Caine: "Joint Force Achieved The Military Objectives" In Iran; Farmers Struggle With Higher Costs Amid Iran, Trump Tariffs; "Kara Swisher Wants To Live Forever" Premieres Saturday 9PM ET. Aired 12:30-1p ET
Aired April 09, 2026 - 12:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[12:30:00]
DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: -- tested and failed. I'll speak to a former U.S.-NATO commander, General David Petraeus, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BASH: "They were tested and they failed." That's what President Trump says about NATO's lack of action in Iran right now. That's according to Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
The President met yesterday with the NATO Secretary General and then posted this on Truth Social. Quote, "NATO wasn't there when we needed them and they won't be there if we need them again." Now the NATO Secretary General spoke to my colleague Jake Tapper about that meeting.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[12:35:07]
MARK RUTTE, NATO SECRETARY GENERAL: He is clearly disappointed in -- with many NATO allies. And I can see his point. This was a meeting between friends. Because we like each other. I really admire his leadership. And he knows.
What he did in The Hague last year at the NATO Summit has been crucial. And NATO allies are with him when it comes to the aims of taking out, as I said, degrading the nuclear and the ballistic missile capacity of the Iranians.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: Joining me now is someone who has a lot of experience with NATO, General David Petraeus, who was also the CIA director under President Obama, in addition, of course, to leading U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. Thank you so much for being here.
What is your take as somebody who has so much experience with NATO about this alliance? And whether or not it is frayed beyond repair? GEN. DAVID PETRAEUS (RET.), FORMER COMMANDER, U.S. CENTCOM: I certainly hope it is not frayed beyond repair. I think it's the most important alliance in history. It has proven itself repeatedly but it does have limits. And that particularly happens when it comes to what are so-called out-of-area operations, as was this one.
And I very much see the President's perspective here as does the Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte, who I knew very well as the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, a very skilled and diplomatic leader. And so, I think he has expressed rightly the concerns, agrees with the concerns that President Trump has voiced but also does recognize that we need to keep this alliance together. It is hugely important. It is performing magnificently in supporting our Ukrainian partners who are fighting enemy in Russia.
BASH: General Petraeus, I just want to make sure I understand what you're saying correctly. Are you suggesting that President Trump is right in that NATO should have come in and helped militarily with the war in Iran?
PETRAEUS: No. No. I'm saying that individual NATO countries, I wish that they had been more supportive. An awful lot of them tried to sort of thread a needle here saying we could use their base for defensive purposes only and so forth. In the end of the day, they actually did make available their bases with the exception of Spain and that's an issue that will have to be dealt with down the road. That does have to be addressed.
But in this case, we are fighting an enemy who poses a threat not just to countries in the Gulf but to countries in Europe as well. In fact, several NATO countries were threatened during this time. Turkey, the U.K. when it came to Cyprus and so forth.
And again, I wish that they had been more forthcoming in their support without committing necessarily to the operations we were directly conducting against Iran. By the way, some of them have very important mind sweeping capabilities, the U.K. in particular. And if we get into that down the road, it would be really helpful if they would commit to being part of whatever maritime coalition is necessary to ensure that the Strait of Hormuz is safe for transitive maritime vessels.
BASH: I want you to listen to what the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Caine, said this week about the military operation.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEN. DAN CAINE, JOINT CHIEFS CHAIRMAN: On February 28th, the President of the United States ordered the joint force to execute Operation Epic Fury with the direction to accomplish three distinct military objectives -- destroy Iran's ballistic missile and drone capabilities, destroy the Iranian navy, and destroy their defense industrial base to ensure that Iran cannot reconstitute the ability to project power outside their borders.
Over the course of 38 days of major combat operation, the joint force achieved the military objectives as defined by the President.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: And the President also said he wanted to take out Iran's enriched uranium. That didn't happen. Do you think this was a military success?
PETRAEUS: I think our military men and women perform magnificently in this regard. And I do believe very strongly that General Caine has been a sober and forthright voice in addressing the country, explaining what we have sought to do and what we have achieved. And I think that we have largely achieved the three objectives that he set out.
Destruction implies something perhaps a bit more than what we have achieved relative to the missile launchers, stockpiles and manufacturing facilities. But I think we're very close to that and the same is true with their defense industrial base and so on.
But I think there's a bit of a paradoxical question that now is being posed. And we can't answer it yet. We can only answer it when the ultimate resolution is achieved here.
[12:40:09]
But that is whether Iran will emerge militarily very weakened. There's no question about the fact that all of their different capabilities have been degraded. I mean, their Navy is basically on the bottom of the Gulf at this point in time. Their other assets dramatically degraded or destroyed.
But could they somehow, again, paradoxically, emerge from this militarily weakened but perhaps actually strategically strengthened? And that revolves around what the ultimate resolution is of control of the Strait of Hormuz. And you can argue, though, they don't control it.
Well, actually, in a way, just by disrupting traffic, they do, because the measure of merit for those who own these ships and own the cargoes in them is whether or not -- it's not about risk insurance. They can get that. It's about the lives of their crew members. And they have to have absolute confidence that these ships will not be struck in order to begin the process of clearing out this 700 vessels or so --
BASH: Yes.
PETRAEUS: -- that are inside the Gulf and even greater number outside the Gulf.
BASH: Which is why I'm guessing that in this really tenuous ceasefire that we're in right now, whatever is ultimately decided, which I guess is going to begin in talks set for starting on Saturday, must include a real deal in the Strait of Hormuz to determine whether or not the U.S. and Israel really did sufficiently weaken the regime in Iran. PETRAEUS: Absolutely. And again, that is, I think, the central issue. These others, perhaps somewhat negotiable, not certainly the removal of U.S. forces or the right to resume enrichment, but again, some of these others I think can be worked. But control of the Red Sea, if that -- control of the Strait, if that becomes Iran's Panama Canal and they can issue tolls for that and so forth, I mean, if it's $2 million per vessel, which is reportedly what some companies have been paying to transit, and you multiply that times 100 or more ships a day, that is a very substantial amount of hard currency --
BASH: Yes.
PETRAEUS: -- to enable Iran to repair the extraordinary damage that has been done, as General Caine rightly observed.
BASH: General Petraeus, always good to talk to you. Thank you so much for being here.
PETRAEUS: Good to be with you, Dana. Thank you.
BASH: And up next, President Trump is betting the farm literally on his war in Iran. Jeff Zeleny went to Iowa to talk to farmers getting hammered by higher prices.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: As you start this season, are there more uncertainties than most?
AARON LEHMAN, FIFTH-GENERATION IOWA FARMER: Oh, yes. So many farms are reporting that they're on the brink of something bad.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[12:47:27]
BASH: Higher prices on oil and fertilizer are hitting American farmers particularly hard. And even if the war in Iran does, in fact, end soon, it could take months to recover from the massive global disruption. Jeff Zeleny went to Iowa to talk to farmers in a state President Trump won three times.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
LEHMAN: A lot of farmer discouragement out there. Prices of our soybeans, prices of all our commodities started going down. Prices of fertilizer and other things we import to plant a crop started going up. So for a year, we've seen some real chaos on all sorts of trade tensions.
ZELENY: There's always uncertainty, obviously, with farming. But as you start this season, are there more uncertainties than most?
LEHMAN: Oh, yes. So many farms are reporting that they're on the brink of something bad, that their communities are on the brink of something bad.
ZELENY (voice-over): Aaron Lehman is a fifth generation Iowa farmer and worried like never before with fallout from the Iran war.
LEHMAN: No one anticipated that we would have a shock to the system like a massive increase in fertilizer prices because all the experts did not see this coming when we received this rise in fertilizer prices because of this war. And really, no one's really seen a way out.
ZELENY (voice-over): Spring planting is just around the corner here in Iowa, where the cost of fertilizer and diesel have soared since the war began.
LEHMAN: We're filling over 100 gallons in our fuel tank multiple times a week.
ZELENY: So that cost will be thousands, thousands --
LEHMAN: Thousands of dollars. Thousands of dollars. And it's not just for what we put into our combine. It's not just what we put in our tractor. In addition to that, what it takes to get my grain to my market, the trucks that are using diesel fuel there, they're feeling it as well.
ZELENY (voice-over): President Trump's promises on trade and tariffs face even more scrutiny here now in a state he won three times.
ZELENY: Have you felt the whiplash of that tariff policy this past year?
WES RIETH, FARM MANAGER, LONGVIEW FARMS: Yes, I mean, it's -- I think it's hard to say for any farmer that we haven't, right?
ZELENY (voice-over): Wes Rieth is farm manager at Longview Farms, navigating an ever-growing set of obstacles.
RIETH: You can look at futures prices for soybeans, you know, again, and kind of watch the pendulum swing a little bit. And I think, yes, that kind of lends itself to, you know, these parallels that we see in geopolitics or, you know, conflicts in the Middle East, et cetera, that, yes, create some of this uncertainty.
[12:50:12]
ZELENY (voice-over): This year, the optimism of a new season comes with even more risk.
RIETH: So we get one chance to plant, and we get one chance to harvest, and that's it for the year. So we get one try every single year. And so even, like, in my lifetime, I might get 30 tries at this. That really puts things into perspective of, like, I only -- you know, the prices of fertilizer, seed, whatever, like, could go crazy. But, like, we can't not plant. We still have to go out and plant the crop.
ZELENY (voice-over): For the next seven months, as the crops begin to grow --
LEHMAN: Just starting to poke through.
ZELENY (voice-over): -- a political season will also unfold, testing whether any of these challenges influence the midterm elections.
LEHMAN: In addition to that, I think farmers are becoming more and more aware that you need to say to our elected leaders, what are you saying about the fertilizer situation? What are you saying about the trade situation? Are we going to stand up to these things that are hurting us, or are we not?
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BASH: Thank you, Jeff, for that very important and beautiful piece.
Coming up, do you want to live forever? Well, stay tuned, because Kara Swisher thinks she might have a way to make that happen for you.
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[12:55:41]
BASH: Kara Swisher wants to live forever, so she's exploring the science and spectacle of the booming longevity industry. Here's just one example from her new CNN series that premieres on Saturday.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KARA SWISHER, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: All right, we're diving.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK.
SWISHER: It's very cold. And wet. It's wet.
You sort of feel numb. But then once you're in, actually you are warmer the more submerged you are. And you can feel your heart, like, pumping blood all around you.
Getting out was the best part.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: CNN Contributor Kara Swisher joins me now live. Kara, better you than me, sister --
SWISHER: I know.
BASH: -- because I don't love a cold plunge.
SWISHER: I don't like the ocean, and I don't like swimming. So I do this for CNN.
BASH: I like the -- oh, wow.
SWISHER: Yes. BASH: Well, that's dedication. That is dedication.
SWISHER: Yes, yes.
BASH: Talk about the buzz about cold plunges. We know it increases blood flow and alertness. Do you buy the hype now that you've tried it?
SWISHER: No. No, it's not the -- it's the question of what it does. And what they do is ascribe all manner of everything to it. It's going to take you out to lunch and clean your car and everything else. And, you know, a lot of men pushed it, like, and they're jumping in. This -- the reason I did this is it was a community thing.
As you can see, there's a lot of women doing it. And it's in San Francisco at Ocean Beach. And so one of the big pluses of a lot of this stuff is doing things with people. And that's the plus here that I was looking at. I wasn't loving it. And there is some issues around heart issues and cold plunges.
Better get in a sauna, that's a better health thing to do for yourself than this. But it was the idea of community and doing something together. And that's actually excellent for longevity.
BASH: So you, as part of this series, obviously the goal was to test, to report out --
SWISHER: Right.
BASH: -- so many anti-aging technologies and treatments. The -- we're seeing some of you right now doing that full --
SWISHER: Yes.
BASH: -- immersive red light experience.
SWISHER: Right.
BASH: You did a special facial in South Korea. By the way, why didn't you take me to that? I would have gone with you. VO2 max tests.
SWISHER: Yes.
BASH: Did anything that you did change your routine?
SWISHER: Yes, VO2 max. And actually I did it with someone we know well, a trainer we know in D.C., Jay Braun (ph). And one of the things that's really interesting is that if you can figure out how to come up and down the scale of your heart and get it more efficiently, you can really have significant impact on your longevity.
And I don't mean years. I mean to improve your health moving into older age so that you're healthier as you move in. And so you can squeeze the health span and the lifespan much closer together. And that's the goal here, obviously, to do that. Because there is a significant delta right now. And a lot of people spend the last part of their life spending a lot of money being sick. Rather than health care, it's sick care.
BASH: Well, and then just look at the sort of flip side of that, which is that another reason why I know you wanted to do this is because so many of the tech bros who you've covered --
SWISHER: Yes.
BASH: -- since, you know, for so long, they spend hundreds of millions of dollars on so many ideas to try to live forever.
SWISHER: Yes, yes.
BASH: And so there's certainly a lot of money that you have to spend on -- when you have health problems. But longevity is also a very expensive prospect.
SWISHER: It is expensive, but it isn't if we spend it at the beginning of our lives, right? And I think it's not as exciting to say, let's have good nutrition in schools, let's -- as they do in Korea, for example. Or let's get better sleep or figure that out, or let's get exercise. Or let's get people housing because homelessness leads to stress.
BASH: Yes.
SWISHER: The stuff that we can do that's preventative seems invisible and not as sexy as this red light thing or the latest, you know, NADs thing or whatever people are happening to do because they want these quick fixes. And what longevity is about is a long fix over a long time. And that's harder to do.
Now, there are some scientific breakthroughs coming that are astonishing, including, you know, GLP-1s is one. AI and cancer research is another. mRNA technology. Away from the politics, it is groundbreaking. CRISPR, gene editing. And there's Jay right there.
And so there's all manner of things you can do ahead of. And we don't promote that in this country. We take care of people after they're sick and don't make them healthy before they are.
BASH: Yes, that's a very important point. I can't wait to see this. Thank you so much --
SWISHER: Thanks a lot.
BASH: -- for coming on to talk about it. Check out the all-new CNN Original Series, "Kara Swisher Wants to Live Forever." It premieres Saturday right here on CNN and Sunday on the CNN app.
Thank you so much for joining us on Inside Politics today. CNN News Central starts right now.
