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Vance Heads To Pakistan, Warns Iran Not To "Play Us"; U.S. And Iran Set For Talks Amid Confusion Over Ceasefire Deal; Shipping Data: Just One Oil Tanker Transited Strait Of Hormuz Today; Energy Costs Push Monthly Inflation To Highest Since 2022; Trump Insults, Mocks Right-Wing Podcasters Opposing Iran War; Kamala Harris Says She "Might" Run For President In 2028. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired April 10, 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]

DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Can Vice President Vance steer the U.S. out of war? I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines at Inside Politics.

As we speak, the vice president is on his way to Pakistan for a day of direct talks with Iran. Vance is leading the U.S. delegation with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. If it goes well, it's a moment that could end this war, or if it goes badly, it's a moment that could end the tenuous ceasefire. Here's what the vice president said before taking off for Pakistan.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT: If the Iranians are willing to negotiate in good faith, we're certainly willing to extend the open hand. If they're going to try to play us, then they're going to find that the negotiating team is not that receptive. So, we're going to try to have a positive negotiation. The president has gave us some pretty clear guidelines and we're going to see.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: And just moments ago, the president spoke to the New York Post, and he said, quote. We're going to find out in about 24 hours. We're going to know soon. We're loading up the ships with the best ammunition, the best weapons ever made, even better than what we did previously, and we blew them apart. And if we don't have a deal, we will be using them, and we will be using them very effectively.

CNN's Clarissa Ward is following these talks and joins us from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Clarissa, thank you so much for being here. So, the speaker of Iranian -- Iran's parliament, who we do expect to lead the Iranian delegation posted on X the following. He said, two of the measures mutually agreed upon between the parties have yet to be implemented, a ceasefire in Lebanon and the release of Iran's blocked assets prior to the commencement of negotiations. These two matters must be fulfilled before negotiations begin. Parse that for us.

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I mean, I think this is certainly a curve ball, Dana, and it's absolutely no accident that this post came out literally minutes after Vice President Vance had taken off for those talks in Islamabad, Pakistan. And now, there's a little bit of a question mark as to how this will get resolved. How serious Iran is about these threats to effectively scuttle the talks if indeed we don't see a ceasefire in Lebanon.

He also talked about those blocked assets. That's something that we haven't heard being listed as a demand before, and it's not clear exactly which blocked assets he's referring to, but certainly it appears to be a game of mental jujitsu, if you will. And we had seen President Trump try to put pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to rein in the Israeli attacks on Lebanon.

Prime Minister Netanyahu making it clear just hours ago that there would be no ceasefire but saying that he was going to have negotiations with Lebanon's government. There has been back and forth between Israeli forces and Hezbollah throughout the day, although no more attacks on Beirut itself.

But Iranians -- Iran's leadership has said again and again that this issue of whether or not Lebanon is included in the ceasefire is absolutely vital to be resolved before those talks take place. And it remains to be seen how the U.S. will respond to this, whether this portends a very rocky start to these negotiations. And I think just gives a sense of the uphill climb that the U.S. delegation will have, trying to find some kind of overlap between the two sides when it is so clear that the demands are glaringly different, Dana.

BASH: Yeah, they sure are. The Strait of Hormuz, as I mentioned, it is very, very hard for ships to get through still. Very few are passing through the Strait. What are you hearing from your sources who are in the Gulf on how the dynamics have changed, if at all, in the past couple of weeks?

WARD: I mean, you're seeing a trickle. We've spoken to a number of different analytics groups that monitor marine traffic. They have different methodologies that they use, but the bottom line is, less than 20 vessels have crossed since this ceasefire was announced, just one oil tanker has managed to get through today. And we have seen Iran's new supreme leader issuing a statement, basically saying there is a new phase of management now at the Strait of Hormuz. And Iran is presiding over that for these Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia, where I am, that is a red line.

[12:05:00]

And it is the most crucial factor are among the most crucial factors that they want to be sure that the U.S. will address and deal with during these face-to-face talks. Because the concern that many have here is that President Trump, at this stage, is so desperate for a deal that he will up sticks and leave, and it will be countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the U.A.E. and others who will be left to deal with the fallout, Dana.

BASH: Clarissa, thank you so much for being here. Appreciate it. Joining me now in studio is Nate Swanson, who served on President Trump's Iran negotiating team last year. He was the director for Iran at the National Security Council in the early months of this Trump term. Thank you so much for being here. Nice to see you again.

So, if you were still at the NSC, what would you have advised the vice president, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff ahead of these talks?

NATE SWANSON, FORMER DIRECTOR FOR IRAN, NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL: Thank you for having me. I mean, and just a slight clarification, I was the Biden NSC, but Trump administration negotiation team. Look, I think the advice would be quite simple. It's to go small, to go to your core priorities, which is to focus on ending the war, solidifying the ceasefire. And I think for the U.S., that means one thing, which is, you know, the full capacity of ships going through the Strait.

And for Iran, that means it should mean, making sure this war doesn't happen again in three or six months. The problem is, is that Iran is now kind of maybe overconfident, expanding the terms of the deal. So, when it was once very, quite simple, now they're adding new and new demands.

BASH: Like?

SWANSON: Well, like monetizing the Strait of Hormuz and then adding Lebanon and now adding frozen assets. So, this is Iran maybe seeing what they can get, maybe posturing, but maybe also over competent.

BASH: What's the best-case scenario for the U.S. right now?

SWANSON: I think the best-case scenario is to end this war, right? I mean, I think this war, doubling down, this war isn't going to change the end result. So, the best scenario is to end the war. And then to do it under terms that don't have long-term damage to the U.S. So, I think trying to keep it small is better. You don't want to give all sanctions to just end the war. You want to just focus very, very narrowly. And hopefully, the president and vice president will be able to do that.

BASH: But to end the war, which -- when you say it, it's a short sentence, but there's obviously a lot that goes with it. It's hard to imagine that the Strait of Hormuz won't be a key factor. I mean, that's what the president has made clear. And so, how do you think the U.S. is going to convince the Iranian to open it up?

SWANSON: Well, it depends how you define it, right? I think for Iran, they are now making it a core demand to monetize it in some form or another, right? So, they want these toll booths going through. So, it is ultimately in Iran's interest to have a huge volume of ships going through, because they're making money off it.

Ideally, the vice president can, like, make that much smaller, you know, like, not do that. But this is Iran feeling very good about their negotiating position, and it looks like there's poised to make, you know, significant revenue out of this.

BASH: I just want to underscore what you're saying here that what Iran is likely to demand, and they've already said it publicly, even though the president has rejected it. We'll see what happens in these negotiations is to make money off of the ships that are going through the Strait. That was not happening before this war started.

SWANSON: That's correct, right? It was not happening.

BASH: So, that's a big win for Iran. And it means that even if the sanctions are not lifted, they're still going to get a lot of money through another means.

SWANSON: That's absolutely correct. And also, don't forget, treasury issued a general license, called general license to you, that basically allowed Iran to sell all their oil on the water legally, which is something that had never been done before. So, this is in addition to monetizing the Strait. So, I mean, Iran is already making money as the war was going on.

BASH: One last question before the vice president left. He said, the U.S. holds, quote, extraordinary economic leverage over Iran. What leverage do you think he's talking about?

SWANSON: Well, I mean, that's our -- that's our sanctions campaign. And he's absolutely -- he's absolutely right about that, right? Iran can't legally sell oil, they can't do banking, they can't use the dollar. These are real, real constraints on Iran that Iran does want to change in the long-term, but this should be a part of a big comprehensive deal, not just ending the war.

BASH: Thank you so much for coming in. Appreciate it.

SWANSON: Thank you very much.

BASH: We'd like to see you.

SWANSON: Yeah. Thank you.

BASH: And coming up, Americans haven't felt this bad about the economy since the end of World War II, stunning new economic data. We'll show you next. Plus, how do Democrats win back the rural voters they've lost during the Trump era? CNN's John King went to North Carolina and reports on the Democrats' uphill battle.

[12:10:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's a lot of anger with the voting base and America has traditionally gone after the angry candidate. They feel represented by that anger. Democrats need to do more to connect to rural America.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:10:00] BASH: As the vice president heads to Islamabad for peace talks. Here's a new domestic political incentive to get a deal. A report out this morning showing consumer sentiment is at its lowest level since the post-World War II era. Let that sink in. This is the worst number since records began in 1952. Also out today, annual inflation surged in March to 3.3 percent.

And if you just look at the monthly number, how much prices rose between February and March, it's the highest we've seen since June of 2022. Gas prices, of course, are driving the surge, which the White House says is temporary. Instead, they are pointing to currently stable prices for groceries and housing.

My panel is here. Now, Molly Ball, you know, a lot of people would say, yeah, I didn't need those numbers to tell you how I'm feeling about the affordability problem in this country.

MOLLY BALL, AUTHOR & POLITICAL JOURNALIST: Absolutely. I mean, I think, as you said, it underscores the political challenge that this administration is in right now. And I think that consumer sentiment number, you know, what that is, is just as you said, it's how people are feeling. It's the vibes about the economy and the pessimism is just incredibly intense.

And you know, it feels like such a Groundhog Day from the Biden administration, right, when they would point at all of these positive economic indicators, and yet the vibes were bad. The vibes kept being bad, and they could not make those bad vibes go away. And you have an administration now that is in a situation where not only are the vibes bad, but the concrete indicators that are going to make those vibes worse are continuing to not be in their favor.

BASH: Now this is the very real backdrop of Vice President Vance's meetings this weekend, and you, Adam -- first of all, Adam Cancryn, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to Inside Politics. Welcome to CNN. And we have you on with one of your terrific reports. You did this along with our colleagues, Alayna Treene and Kevin Liptak, looking at the political calculus here and considerations of J.D. Vance.

And here's what you have from a source in this piece. No one in the vice president's orbit is thinking about this in the realm of future political considerations. And I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.

ADAM CANCRYN, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Well, look, I mean, that is what anybody at this state -- at this point has to say, right? If you're J.D. Vance, if you're Marco Rubio, if you're anybody in Trump's orbit, you have to say, look, we're only focused on getting through the next three years.

And there's part of that that's actually correct, is J.D. Vance's job as vice president first. He's heading into what is arguably the biggest moment of his vice presidency, trying to end this war that he personally never really wanted to be into. And now they're trying to find a way out. And also, to Molly's point, get to a level of stability where they can even begin to start to think about the midterms, which already are not looking great when you think about the economy and what people really care about heading into November.

BASH: There's a one detail that we all loved on the Inside Politics team from your lot of details, but this one in particular, from your piece. A lot of people were looking at his X feed, his Twitter feed, because the vice president is historically very active on X, hasn't been during this war. And the question was, you know why? What you have in there is that, that the White House Communications Director, Steven Cheung, said that he gave up social media for Lent.

CANCRYN: Did, he did. And look, it's particularly well timed. If you think --

BASH: You think?

CANCRYN: --you know, what's transpired in the last month, month and a half. What I'll be looking for very closely is, once Lent is over, you know, once we've -- we've kind of gotten back, what is his X feed now start to look like. Do we get back into that pugilistic, you know, laying out everything he's thinking on X, or is this a new, you know, more statesman like J.D. Vance that we'll see.

BASH: We've got a lot of great political reporting today here at CNN, and I'm going to bring yours and now. Aaron, you did a great piece about the divide among sort of MAGA media people with big MAGA platforms in the podcast universe in particular. And one of the things that you talk about Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and people like that who are really separating from the president.

The president put out a pretty lengthy social media post about this yesterday. And I'm just going to read part of it to you. You have it there on the screen. Pardon me, my allergies. Tucker Carlson, who couldn't even finish college. He was a broken man when he got fired from Fox, and he's never been the same. Perhaps, he should see a good psychiatrist. Narrator's note, I should tell you. He went -- Tucker Carlson went to the White House as recently as February 23, five days before the war began.

[12:20:00]

OK. Megyn Kelly, who nastily asked me the now famous only, Rosie O'Donnell question. Narrators note, she campaigned with Trump in November of 2024. Candace Owens, who accuses the highly respected first lady of France of being a man, and she is not. She interviewed the president in 2021 at Mar-a-Lago.

Or bankrupt Alex Jones, who says, some of the dumbest things and lost his entire fortune as he should have for his horrendous attack on the families of Sandy Hook shooting victims, ridiculously claiming it was a hoax. And final narrator's note, Trump appeared on Alex Jones show in December of 2015. It was a little while ago, but he said to him, your reputation is amazing.

AARON BLAKE, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: It's been pretty remarkable to see the influencer class, the kind of independent media types, including some of the ones that we just saw there. Split with Trump over the war in ways that we haven't necessarily seen the opinion hosts on Fox News or conservative media traditional broadcast. And what I did is I actually looked the Spotify charts to see the top podcasts.

BASH: And we're going to put that up because it's fascinating.

BLAKE: Yeah. It's very interesting because the top 14 podcasts on Spotify, six of those podcasts. These are not all politics podcasts, but six of those people happen to be people who have aligned with Trump in one way or another, or endorsed him in the 2024 campaign, but have split with him, at least on the war, if not on other issues.

So that creates this kind of unusual and unprecedented dynamic where people who are subscribing to these shows and hearing them, who may be more casual voters, maybe not. You know, politics watchers intensely are getting some very skeptical takes on these issues in ways that they may not have otherwise before. And so, I'm going to be really interested to see how this might play out in the election. I don't know if we know exactly how something like this plays, but it is very one sided right now in this space.

BALL: And these are -- these numbers are so remarkable, I thought, because these are the most popular podcasts. So, this is a lot of people we're talking about. This is a very big audience, probably, no offense, bigger than CNN daytime, right in the aggregate. And this is a lot of people who are, you know, hypothetically, potentially interested in Trump's politics, who are now get hearing, as you said, a lot of criticism from a lot of these figures in a space that is not all that political, right?

So, these are exactly the type of infrequent potential voters. The Republicans are so worried about in November, because those are the ones that they think Trump is discouraging and at risk of losing.

BASH: All right, everybody standby. We're going to look at what's going on, on the Democratic side of the political ledger. Behind the scenes, jockeying going on for 2028. It's actually little less behind the scenes this week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REV. AL SHARPTON, AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST: So, are you going to run again in '28?

KAMALA HARRIS, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT: So, OK.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:25:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: Former Vice President Kamala Harris is addressing the political elephant, or, should I say, donkey, in a lot of rooms. Here's how she responded just moments ago at the National Action Network convention when Rev. Al Sharpton asked point blank if she's running for president again in 2028?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: listen, I might, I might. I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about it. Look, the American people have a right to expect that anyone who wants to run for office and be a leader, that it can't be about themselves. And what they want for themselves, it's got to be about the American people. And that's how I think of it, and I am thinking about it in the context of then, you know, is who and where and how can the best job be done for the American people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: My panel is back. Molly?

BALL: I was wondering how long the word salad was going to go on. It was sort of --

BASH: But she was pretty clear there.

BALL: -- waiting for the end of the sentence. But no, she was -- she was admirably definitive, I guess, about not being definitive. But she didn't try to beat around the bush or pretend that it's the last thing on her mind.

BASH: Right.

BALL: She's thinking about it. We all know she's thinking about it, of course, she's thinking about it. I wonder how seriously she's thinking about it, and what she's doing, and you know, how much juice she's going to have and what is likely to be a very large field. Because I think, you know, my sense of the Democratic base is they don't think she was treated fairly. They don't really blame her for the loss of the election. At the same time, they're ready for something new. They're ready for fresh blood.

BASH: Yeah. As we speak, Pete Buttigieg is at this conference which is going on. Al Sharpton is talking to him right now. Over the past couple of days, we have seen many potential 2020 aiders speak there and talk about how they see the future of the Democratic Party. Let's listen to some examples.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. JOSH SHAPIRO (D-PA): We have an opportunity to have a real debate within our party about what we stand for, about what our affirmative vision is, which can't just be about banging Donald Trump every day. It has to be about what we are going to do to make people's lives better.

SHARPTON: Any of these people who are thinking about 2028?