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Trump: Iran Will "Pay The Price" For Stalled Negotiations; Trump On Iran: "We're Going To Be Attacking Them...Very Hard"; Trump Says He's Looking For Permanent DNI Nominee; Trump: Inflation Will "Come Down Like A Rock" When War Ends; Trump Signs $70B Immigration Enforcement Bill; Trump: Pulte Will Be At DNI For "Short While," Not Permanently. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired June 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]

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: You know, I had the right to sell that. And in my first term, a group came to see me, wanting to buy it, and they offered me exactly 10 percent of what it's worth today. And I didn't want to do it because I didn't want to look foolish when they flipped it a year later for hundreds of billions of dollars more. So, I kept it and I put him in charge as soon as I got here and he's done an amazing job. It could be worth a trillion dollars.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a pretty different portfolio of that.

TRUMP: Why, is that. But, you know, smart people are smart people. I always say I'd rather have smart than experience, but experience is good too. I would say this. He's going to be there for a short while, while we pick somebody else. We're interviewing five different people, they're all very good, very different, and we'll put somebody there.

But people want it downsized, the senators and the congress people. I think everybody wants it downsized, and many people, I think, and I won't speak for Todd, but -- and I'm not sure how Todd feels, but by the way, he's great. I hope you -- people have given him an easy run because he's very busy. He doesn't need stupid people saying, why didn't you get a higher mark at a certain college? Because he's highly educated. He was a great student. He's great at everything he's done. But how come he got a B plus?

See, they'll go after him for getting a B plus instead of an A, but the other guy can be a thug and let him run, he's OK, he's fine. The one thing about him, it's great, because every time they bring something up, he's worse than anybody that we've ever seen. And I hope the Republicans are going to use him as your -- as your standard bar when they -- when they say that, gee, yeah, Eric, we don't like the way you dress today, it's unacceptable, right?

And then all you have to do is point to this thug that they're trying to put in, so pretty much, that's the way it is. He's going to do a good job. He's going to be there for a very short period of time. He will be superseded and replaced by somebody that's going to have the job permanently. (CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Democrats say, you know, they'll hold up that --

TRUMP: I don't care what they say. Democrats, they're not Democrats, they're Democrats, they're dumb people. Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (inaudible)

TRUMP: Then I guess something's going to happen. No, we can't let them extort us. I told the guys today we can't let them. They've done it on numerous occasions. I said, we can't. This -- what we're signing today, has been amazing, but they tried to extort us, and eventually, and they were losing tremendous support, because they're extorting on law and order and they can't win on law and order. People want law and order. They don't want crime. And that's essentially what they were doing, and ultimately, they could not take the heat, but we can't let them --

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (inaudible)

TRUMP: Yeah. Most successful World Cup they've ever had. They've never sold tickets at that level. They've never sold that many tickets so quickly. It's amazing, because you don't think of soccer, we use the word football, soccer, right? But you don't think of soccer in this country. It's the most successful. I spoke to Johnny this morning. He's fantastic and he's the boss. He said, there's never been anything close to what's happened.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But because of this success, some people are afraid that it's going to be harder and harder to get visas to come from outside. Did you --

TRUMP: We're working on it very closely to make sure the right people come into our country.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: I will. I will.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (inaudible) Mr. President, about the latest inflation number, which came out this morning. Could that be --

TRUMP: No, I love it. The numbers were great. You know, what I really love, I love the inflation. You know why? Because as soon as this war is over, you know, I can say it now, something you didn't know. Do you know we've been taking out millions of barrels of oil? Nobody knows it. You know who doesn't know about it? Iran, until right now.

We took out the other night, 22 ships late at night with no lights because they don't have any radar because we blasted the crap out of it. We took out -- that's why oil is $85 a barrel. I mean, you take a look. Remember when I did this, I said, look, the one bad thing will be -- we hit the best economy we've ever hit. And I said to my people, I had Scott, I had Howard, I had Pete, I had Walt, I had Todd in the room. I said the one thing we have to do now, we had just hit the highest stock market in history, highest 401 case in history. Everything was going well, and I said, I hate to do this to you guys, but Iran is going to have a nuclear weapon very soon.

We have to go and attack, so we hit him with the B-2 bombers, which took a lot of courage. It was totally successful. We buried it very hard to get, but now we had to make the second move. And I said, you know, the bad part is the stock market will go down by a lot based on predictions of experts, like 25 percent, and it was worth it to me. It was worth it, not to have a nuclear weapon.

[12:05:00]

And the other thing is that oil would go to $250 a barrel. It's at 85, and which is pretty amazing, and here's the key. We just hit today another stock market, and I had 74 in my short time here, 74 days, we had stock market all time historical highs. Nobody can believe it. The Dow -- the Dow, the S&P. S&P was at 7000. They said in four years, maybe five years. It will never hit it during the term. It was too much.

I hit it in my first year. I hit on the Dow. It was 50,000 was an impossible number. They said five, six years out, you'd have -- well, I hit it in my first year, and now I get everyone in the room and say, congratulations, but now I'm going to take it down a little bit because we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon, and they all agreed with me. Todd, you remember? Everybody agreed, and we took a little journey down to Iran.

We first stopped off at Venezuela, by the way, and we have paid for that war many, many times over, and we have great relationships with the people of Venezuela. We get along with them. Great -- it was a great success. It was a one-day war. It was really -- was really, to be exact, 48 minutes of fury, and it was over. And Venezuela has done great relationships with the people, are great. It's become a happy country, believe it or not. I mean, it's become a happy country, and we're -- we're taking out millions of barrels of oil from Venezuela.

And then we went to Iran, and essentially, we've done the same thing. It doesn't look as pretty, but we've -- there's no navy. 159 ships at the bottom of the sea. There's no air force. All of their planes are blown up. Most of their drones are gone, most of their drone making ability is gone, most of their missiles are gone. All of their leadership is gone, so they replaced it. All of that leadership is gone, so they replaced it. And that's the people we're dealing with now. And I think they're going to want to make a deal, but we're going to find out.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (inaudible) down between when --

TRUMP: Oh. What the war is over?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

TRUMP: It's coming down.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know you can't --

TRUMP: It's going to come down like a rock. And again, we're taking out millions, which I'm just announcing today for the first time, but we've been taking out millions of barrels of oil, millions of barrels, every night to get oil, but now I'm going to tell you, because they just figured it out. So now that they figured it out, I can tell you. It was very hard for me. I wanted to say it so weird, I didn't want to ruin it, but it was very hard. But millions of barrels of oil has come out, and that's why it's at 85, $90 a barrel, instead of 250.

But we have the greatest military in the world, the toughest military in the world, the grip, it's just the best in every way. Nobody even close. There's no military that's even close. I rebuilt it during my first term. I'm using it now. When this conflict is over, Todd said, please call it a conflict, as opposed to the word. He didn't like the word war, but it's sort of a conflict. It's a military operation.

When it's over, you will see oil drop to where it was before. We're getting gasoline. Just before it started, I was in Iowa, and we passed gas stations at $1.85 a gallon, and we'll be back at those levels very soon. Thank you very much.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you, guys. Thank you, guys.

DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Welcome to Inside Politics. I'm Dana Bash, and we have been following breaking news. You have been listening to President Trump answer questions in the Oval Office. He was there with members of Congress around him to sign a massive $70 billion immigration enforcement law, now law.

I want to talk about that, but first, I do want to discuss what he talked about with reporters who asked him questions on Iran. I want to get straight to CNN's Kristen Holmes at the White House. Kristen, the president essentially said the United States is going to hit Iran again militarily.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. I mean, he was talking about escalating military action. He talked about how they hit yesterday. How they would hit again today. He sounded incredibly frustrated when it came to a potential deal, saying that it was already negotiated. Why wouldn't they just sign it? And, as you mentioned, essentially floated the idea that they'd be continuing these strikes that we saw yesterday. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We're going to be attacking them and attacking them very hard.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And resuming -- TRUMP: Yeah. Well, we are based on the helicopter, I guess we have the right to do that. You know, they shot down a very -- a very incredible, actually an incredible machine. So, we'll see what happens, but we hit them hard yesterday. And we're going to hit them again hard today, in case you miss it, because you don't turn on your television set.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[12:10:00]

HOLMES: Just a reminder of what we're hearing from U.S. officials yesterday on background, telling us that this was incredibly targeted, that these were various places that had been pinpointed and was seen as a justifiable response to the downing of that Apache aircraft. We also heard from U.S. officials that they didn't think this was going to impact negotiations, and that all of this was going to be contained. It's obviously not what President Trump is saying here.

Now, of course, it is President Trump, and often when he feels as though he is not where he wants to be in any kind of negotiation. He uses bluster and a lot of rhetoric, aggressive rhetoric like this. So, we'll have to wait and see if this is actually part of a plan and a military operation to go back into Iran, or if this is President Trump trying to bring Iran back to the negotiating table, which, of course, it's very clear he was frustrated in this conversation.

BASH: Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up. Yes, you're right. He talked about his frustration openly, that in his words they, Iran, is tapping and tapping, and they say, all right, let's give them a couple more days. And he said they're tapping because it's meaningful paper, and that does beg the question of whether or not the president is just using whatever rhetorical tools he has in his toolbox to try to get Iran to settle on.

And by the way, this is just a temporary deal, they're not talking yet, unless there's something that you know that I don't about an ultimate deal. This is just more of a temporary deal. And Iran clearly is in no rush, which could be part of the saber rattling that we heard just now.

HOLMES: Yeah. And I asked him a month and a half ago if he thought that Iran was stringing him along, and he said, he'd know later that night. Well, that was a month and a half ago, and there's still no deal. And just a reminder, two nights ago, he said that a deal would be coming likely in two to three days. That is clearly not where he stands today.

I mean, he was again frustrated, saying the negotiating was done. Why wouldn't they just sign the paper, saying they're playing -- the U.S. playing him for a sucker. So, they had to essentially teach them a lesson. Again, unclear if this is just rhetoric or if it is President Trump launching a new chapter in this Iran war.

I do think it's important to note that he has been unwilling for the last two months to escalate any kind of military operation in Iran, even as retaliation, until last night, because of the fact that he was hopeful that a deal would come through. They were looking for any kind of diplomatic off ramp here, so that has to be in the back of our heads. As we know that is still the ultimate goal, even though President Trump is now using this rhetoric of ramping up military.

BASH: Kristen, before I bring in some of our other panelists, I do want to ask you about one other very important news issue that the president talked about, which is his replacement for the director of national security -- excuse me, Director of National Intelligence, DNI, Bill Pulte. Pretty defiant on this, he put him in temporarily. He's going to now start earlier than had originally been scheduled. And the Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill are saying, we're not going to do anything to give you intelligence tools, surveillance tools that will expire legally on Friday until you say, I'm not going to put Pulte in this role. The president is pushing back.

HOLMES: The president was basically confirming everything he reported yesterday -- today in the Oval Office, saying that he basically told Johnson yesterday that he couldn't let Democrats extort him. Talking about the SAVE America Act, which he was signing. How Democrats had tried to hang that over his head, tried to threaten him on that, and then eventually they backed down.

Essentially, he clearly believes that they're going to do the same thing when it comes to FISA and letting this lapse on Friday, as you were mentioning, which is set to do, and Democrats have been threatening that they will let it lapse if Pulte remains in this space. He had originally told Tulsi Gabbard, the White House had talked to the DNI team, saying this is not happening until after June 30. Gabbard can wrap up everything she needs to do, move on, she's resigning, and now he's saying Pulte is coming in much earlier than that.

And he's also telling people out loud now what he was saying to his allies behind closed doors. He is assuring them that it is going to be a short tenure, that this is very temporary, that this is all about gutting out members of the intelligence community that he thinks are members of the "deep state" before putting in a permanent DNI.

Now, whether or not that is enough to comfort some Republicans and Democrats when it comes to FISA and extending FISA, that remains to be seen. It doesn't seem as though that's going to be assuring to either some of these Republicans and Democrats. But it was interesting to hear him there, doubling down and really using the bill that he was signing as an example of, Democrats are trying to extort us, but they're always back down. So, in this case, they'll do it again.

[12:15:00]

BASH: Yeah. And in this case -- and we can talk about this in a second. The bill that he signed and it's on immigration, and a lot of money for ICE and Border Patrol. Democrats didn't back down, the Republicans just found a way to work around them. And so, I don't know that that's doable on this really critical surveillance law. I want to bring in Ron Brownstein and Ayesha Rascoe. Ron, I'm going to start with you and talk about another sort of back and forth that we heard from the president and reporters about another big piece of news this morning, which is inflation and inflation being up again, and at I think a three-year high. And the president again sort of brushing that aside, saying don't worry, as soon as this is over, inflation will come down, gas prices will come down, everything will be fine. And the question is whether or not, a, that's going to happen.

There you see, we're going to put on -- putting on the screen the CPI. It's up 4.2 percent and just half a percentage point in a month, which is a lot. And for regular people, not just looking at data, this just means it's confirming what you're seeing when you go to the grocery store, and when you buy other goods that it just costs more and that is a big deal to this electorate.

RON BROWNSTEIN, BLOOMBERG OPINION COLUMNIST & CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yeah. Look, the big picture here is that the main reason Donald Trump was reelected in 2024 was that voters felt the cost of living was out of control under Joe Biden, and they trusted Trump to do a better job of bringing it under control. A majority of his voters in '24 said inflation was their biggest concern. One year into his presidency, voters felt that he had not made enough progress, that he was not focusing enough on the problem, and that to the extent he was focusing on it, his policies were making it worse with tariffs and cuts in federal health for healthcare.

Then he launches a war without making any effort to explain it to the public that greatly exacerbates the problem that they elected him to solve, that they already felt that he had not done enough to solve. And here we are, what we're now only five months from the election. Looking at elevated inflation approval ratings for inflation for Trump that are in the 20s on the economy, you know, as we talked about in his first term, his rating on the economy was almost always higher than his overall approval rating. It was a floor lifting him up.

Now his rating on the economy is typically well below his overall rating. It is an undertow pulling him down. I looked at that -- this morning, that 68 percent of voters in the 2018 exit poll said that the economy was excellent or good. It may be the opposite this year in the exit poll, with 68 saying, only fair or poor, and that is obviously the biggest single threat to Republican fortunes in November. And Trump doesn't really have an easy way out of the vice that he's in with Iran, and it's the Iran war and its impact on higher rate gas prices.

BASH: And Ayesha, I do want to ask you about the reason why the president was in the Oval Office with lawmakers. Interesting that the House Speaker was there, the Republican Senate leader wasn't there. Rand Paul, who is chair of the Homeland Security Committee, so it's understandable why he was there in terms of his title, but the two of them have certainly butted heads in a big way.

Nevertheless, the idea that he just signed into law a $70 billion immigration bill that is supposed to last the administration for three years, that is so unusual. It's supposed to -- traditionally the way it works is, it's funded, everything is funded for a year, and that is intentional, so that Congress can have some accountability with their power of the purse. It's a bit of a tell that Republicans wanted this to last for the rest of the Trump presidency.

Tell about how worried they could be about November and losing control of the House, and they wouldn't necessarily get this money. It is also interesting, as Kristen noted, that Democrats didn't have any say in this, even though they pushed really hard for months and months and months after the horrors in Minneapolis to use the power of the purse, to change policy, and it didn't happen. They were negotiated, they wanted all -- they wanted it all, they didn't get it all, and Republicans took their time and worked around Democrats.

AYESHA RASCOE, NPR HOST, "WEEKEND EDITION SUNDAY" AND "UP FIRST": Well, what it shows is that Republicans, you know, once again, I would say that Congress is, you know, giving away their power, right? Because part of the reason why you have the power of the purse is so that you can provide that oversight, and if there are things that are happening that you disagree with, then you could come in and say, no, hey, this is inappropriate. But they're giving that up, but I also think that it also shows, like, how difficult of an issue this is. Usually, immigration is like a winner for Republicans, and generally it's been a winner for President Trump.

[12:20:00]

But after what happened in Minneapolis, then the kind of the calculus on that began changing a bit, because people started going, wait a minute, this is too much, this is not exactly what we signed up for, and the president is also dealing with the fact that, yes, at the border he's been very successful, but now it's no longer an issue, and he doesn't really get much credit for it, which he often complains about.

I also think it's going to be difficult just bringing it back to where what we were talking about before, with inflation, you're giving $70 billion to ICE, but how is that helping the average American, right? If you're making the argument that, oh, immigrants are taking your job and all of this and that, but then people are at home struggling, they may go, well, how is this helping me? You seem to have a lot of money for a lot of things that you want to do, but what about my pockets? What about my dinner table issues?

BASH: Yeah. Well, that's definitely the argument we're going to hear. We are already hearing from Democrats as they are out on the campaign trail. Don't go anywhere. Up next. I'm going to speak with a veteran and a member of the House Armed Services Committee about this breaking news that we heard from President Trump saying that the U.S. will resume strikes against Iran again. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:25:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BASH: President Trump said moments ago that the U.S. will resume military strikes against Iran today. Joining me now is Democratic Congresswoman Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, a member of both the armed services and House Intelligence Committees. Thank you so much for being here. First of all, your reaction to what we heard from the president, and any sense of what the attacks or response, military response, could look like?

REP. CHRISSY HOULAHAN (D-PA): Sure, and thanks again for having me, Dana. I was struck as I was walking over here by something I remember from high school, when you're reading a book and your teacher says that this is an unreliable narrator, you know, what is that? It's when somebody's writing the book in first person and you start wondering, is this person truthful?

Is this person, you know, got a real grip on reality? They say things that are unusual and strange, and all of a sudden, you start realizing, I've seen this pattern before. Are we in a war? Are we not in a war? Are we -- are we fighting? Are we going to bomb people or not going to bomb people? Are there things to bomb or not things to bomb?

At this point, I don't know what to believe. This -- this president has on one day said that there's going to be peace negotiations, and the next day said he's bored with them. And I guess I would say that this is all at the expense of our men and women who are in peril right now, in those who serve in uniform in very dangerous areas. We don't deserve that.

It's also at the expense of the American people, who would like this president to be doing anything but that, anything but working in Iran, and you've seen that with the stories that you were covering, in terms of inflation and our domestic economy as well.

BASH: But in this particular case, what he is saying is that it is a response to what he says is Iran shooting down Apache helicopters. Should there be a response to that? A and B, have you, as a member of the Armed Services Committee, gotten a briefing on what the president says was these chapters shut down.

HOULAHAN: I have not had any more information about that than you have had in terms of formal briefings. My understanding is that there already was a proportional response that he said he executed on before, so the idea that there would be more proportion delivered is a bit nonsensical. And every one of these opportunities here are opportunities to lose men and women in uniform, to have deaths, more deaths. We've already had 13.

And this president has already said that if there are more Americans who are lost that, it will become even more of a war. And I'm frustrated because I don't understand where we're going with this. If we're going to get grade school about it, he started it, and that's one of the things of the tit for tat will end up with all of us being worse off for that.

BASH: And the president is openly frustrated that the diplomatic side of this, trying to get even a short-term deal, which is really all they're talking about right now, isn't going anywhere. He said this morning that Iran is tapping on a deal. He's waiting for a response. What does that tell you?

HOULAHAN: I'm frustrated too. I don't know if you remember or the folks out there remember, but years ago he tore up a deal that was years and years in the making, the JCPOA, which had the contours very much that look like what he's looking for in a peace deal now. So, he and he alone tore up that deal that was really hard, hard fought. And now he's looking for something that looks very similar while he is in an active hot war.

And I think he should not be surprised by the results. He is negotiating in effect with people who are -- have a lot more at stake than he does. This is an existential war for the Iranians and they're responding in that way.

BASH: Let me ask you about something that is more in your intelligence committee purview, and that is the fact that the president is putting Bill Pulte, who currently runs kind of an obscure housing agency in- charge temporarily of the DNI, the Director of National Intelligence, that would be the position he would take. He says he's going to look for more

[12:30:00]