Return to Transcripts main page

Inside Politics

Trump On Iran; U.S. Will "Probably Hit Them Hard Again Tonight"; Trump Says Ceasefire May Be Over, Threatens New Strikes Tonight; Trump Calls Iranian Leaders "Scum," Says Ceasefire May Be Over; Trump: We "Essentially Demolished" Iran's Military. Aired 12- 12:30p ET

Aired July 08, 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: Welcome to Inside Politics. I'm Dana Bash in Washington.

And the breaking news, we are following is coming out of Turkey. You're looking at live pictures there. The NATO summit is happening at any moment now. President Trump is going to have a press conference. He says he's going to take reporters' questions from reporters rather. After declaring earlier that the ceasefire with Iran is over and threatening to hit the regime hard tonight. We're going to bring that press conference to you as soon as it happens. He's likely going to be asked about this message from earlier.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: So, as I'm concerned it's over. We hit him very hard last night, very, very, probably hit him hard again tonight. I'll give him a little warning. We're going to hit him hard tonight, but we'll see how it all works out. We may take over Kharg Island. There's not a thing they can do about it, but I said, don't hit the pipes, just hit everything else, and they hit it. They may hit it again tonight. So, you know, as for your question, normally I'm not that way, but they really deserve it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: This coming from the president, who warned just three weeks ago that a prolonged war could trigger, quote, an economic catastrophe. Let's go straight to Ankara, Turkey. Nic Robertson is there, covering the NATO summit. Nic?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yeah. And I think the reason the president is going to be pressed on that, and he was pressed on that a couple of times this afternoon when journalists were in the room, when he was meeting with the Syrian president, when he was meeting with the Ukrainian president. And the reason he'll be pressed on it is because he has seemed to leave an opening there, he said at one point earlier on in the day that perhaps the negotiators wanted to continue.

And I think we understand that the mediators here, Pakistan and Qatar, who both been involved at stressful times in getting the MOU up and running, and then since it's been agreed to try to get over difficult moments, nothing as difficult as this that has to be said, but I think the understanding is that they are working behind the scenes.

So, is the president really going to go ahead with putting a blockade on the Strait of Hormuz? The Iranians are saying if the United States strikes, then they are just going to go ahead and completely cut the Strait of Hormuz again. So, both sides, in a way, indicating a willingness to go back to the war as it was before, at a certain level, it's not clear that the U.S. military is postured as ready as it was. Let's say, three or four weeks ago, when the MOU hadn't quite been signed.

So, I think the importance of trying to get a better understanding of where the president is leaving this. Will there be strikes? Is the MOU breaking down completely, or is there a little room for optimism? And I think there is that sense that potentially this is a moment where the president is trying to signal pressure on Iran, but of course, Iran is pressure -- is signaling their own pressure back.

BASH: Yeah, they sure are. Nic, thank you so much. It is one of these moments, and we've seen a lot of these moments where -- and it could go either way over the past many, many months. Thank you so much. I'm joined by a terrific group of reporters here. This is the flavor of pressure David Chalian that the president offered this morning on Iran.

He said, I don't want to deal with them anymore, they're scum. You know what scum is? They're scum. They're sick people. They're led by sick people, and they're vicious, violent people. And if they had a nuclear weapon, they'd use it. As far as I'm concerned, it's over.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR & WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF: Yeah. The president doesn't seem to be in all that good of a mood at this NATO gathering, overall, I would say. But I think it's unclear what specifically precipitated this change in posture to just abruptly declare it over, though he did, of course, leave some opening for talks to continue. But you do have to sort of step back and ask, you know, where does Donald Trump think this leaves the United States?

[12:05:00]

Because it seems to me, he's -- if it's -- if it's over, if the ceasefire is over. He is back to where he was several weeks ago, which is deciding to have to up the military effort in some way to try and get a military resolution area, if talks are no longer, which is an unpopular war at home. So, that puts him in a political bind, or it is to sort of go along in this never-ending resolution to this, whether on the nuclear piece or the Strait of Hormuz piece, which has huge economic consequences to live in that moment as well. So, I'm not really sure what he sees right now as the good option for him left on the table here.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I totally agree. And I think -- and I was glad you included this when you were, you know, entering Nic in, Dana, this idea that he said it would lead to an economic catastrophe, that's part of why he felt when he was abroad for the G7 summit. Yes, that they needed to move forward with this memorandum of understanding. He said he didn't want to be like Herbert Hoover and not much has really changed from the calculus that could lead to that happening.

BASH: And Alayna, here is the president.

TRUMP: It's a lot of us. Wow. Well, it's important stuff, and you know, our team out here, all -- they've all become stars, superstars, actually. But we want to thank you very much. We've had a tremendous time, and I think a great success, and we just concluded a very successful NATO summit here in Turkey.

And I want to thank President Erdogan, who's really a great man. He's a great leader. He's a friend of mine, been a friend of mine for a long time. He's a strong person, a very strong personality, and that's why he runs such a successful and good company -- country, and really a great, I would say, a great country. Militarily, he's very powerful. People leave him alone, but he's really done a fantastic job.

And from the moment we got off the plane, you look at the airports were beautiful. He built -- they built a new terminal for our arrival. Everything was beautiful. And so, I just want to thank President Erdogan, who's done a fantastic job in Turkey. And I also want to thank NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. Mark is an extraordinary person, smart, great leader. It's not easy leading so many leaders like that. Get a lot of leaders and their strong personalities, every one of them. And Mark marked as an unbelievable job. Couldn't find anybody better.

I just want to say there was tremendous love in that room. The press got to see the sitting, but they didn't get to see the speaking, and I actually said, it's too bad the press couldn't see this, because every one of them spoke for a little while, and I spoke for a little while, and it's a big -- it's a lot of speeches. We kept it short, but it's too bad the press couldn't have seen what we -- what we were doing in that room, because it was very smart people, and they have a lot of good in their heart, not evil, good, and they're doing a great job for their country.

The world is doing well. We have -- as you know, the oil is down. We'll see whether or not we keep it down. We should keep it down. We're doing things that should have been done 47 years ago with Iran. And I just want to say that throughout my first term and over the past 18 months, the United States has led a historic effort to dramatically increase the defense spending, and to have equipment that no other country in the world has.

When you look at Venezuela, when you look at Iran, essentially demolished their military in a couple of weeks. They had a good military, they had a good navy, they had 159 ships, everyone's at the bottom of the seat, they had hundreds of airplanes. They're all gone. They're all lying burned up on the runways. They were totally decimated. Their radar is gone. Their -- everything is gone. Their leaders are gone, frankly. And their combat capability is pretty low. They have a small percentage of missiles left. They have some of the launchers, missile launchers left, call them launching pads, but most of that's been destroyed too. So, we are -- we have the strongest military in the world by far, not even close. Everybody admits it. Last year's summit in the Netherlands was great also. And we achieved an unprecedented agreement to increase the annual defense spending, and it's the benchmark, raising it from 2 percent to 5 percent of GDP, which everybody said was impossible, and now they're all thanking me and most of the country have agreed to it. We have a couple of -- couple of that didn't, but I have a feeling they're going to and pretty quickly.

[12:10:00]

In fact, today they were very positive. One of them, in particular, was I didn't think a good team player. Today was a great team player. As all of the leaders understand very well, the United States remains by far the largest contributor to NATO monetarily, and maybe otherwise, and the strongest military anywhere in the world. And they respect us as a country. Again, they didn't respect us two years ago. They laughed at us. NATO laughed at us. Everybody laughed at us.

They don't laugh anymore. There's no more laughing. This year, we invested a record $1 trillion in our armed forces and we're going to be asking for 1.5 trillion, coming up. We have the money being spent on the best equipment anywhere in the world. In the working session this morning, we discussed the progress other members are making toward the 5 percent target, and they're making great progress.

Many of these countries are very rich, by the way. We don't have to feel sorry for them, but it doesn't mean they're properly protected. There's a big difference. Some have truly answered the call, and others are making big changes, and will be answering the call. I think I can say, in all cases, they're going to be answering the call, and we'll be -- we'll be taking in over a trillion dollars a year toward defense and that's a tremendous amount of money. That's a big up.

They were 2 percent, they were actually at 1 percent, I got him to 2 percent. And I wanted to get him to five, and we got up to five the last time. And there, you know, just again, if you could have seen the respect and the love in the room, and its love really for the country, for our country. I don't want to say me, because you'll say, oh, he's so conceited, he's such a conceited person, but they do. I mean, you know, they like the job I'm doing. They said, we love -- sir, we love you.

These are grown people saying that isn't that nice. Maybe I don't know, maybe they're trying to get to me. And in a way they did because there was tremendous unity in that room, and I urge all nations to accelerate their plans to get the benchmark as quickly as possible. Benchmark is going to be that 5 percent number. That's the number it should have been for years. As a result of the commitment we achieved last year, defense spending of other NATO members surged by more than, almost $150 billion in 2025 and much of that money is being spent on American made equipment. They all want American made equipment. We're pushing very hard to have the defense companies. They're great. We make the best equipment, the Patriots and the Tomahawks, and everything we have is considered to be the best. Not by me, it's everybody wants it. I wish we made it faster, because we could sell as much as we could make, and as you know, I had Lockheed, and every one of the companies, all of the companies who had Raytheon as an example, Boeing.

So many of those great companies are now building plants. They had big plants, but they were using them 24/7. I said that's not the way to do it. You have to build more plants, you don't have to just go overtime. No tax on overtime, remember that, please. No tax on overtime. Those people are happy. But they go and they were doing literally 24 hours to get the Tomahawks done and the Patriots done, and all of the other defensive and offensive equipment done. It's the most sought after equipment in the world.

You saw that with Venezuela, where they had a lot of great equipment. It wasn't ours, and it didn't work. Our equipment -- our equipment works, but we have to produce it faster for other countries, for everybody, including ourselves. We have to produce it faster, so we think within a year, year and a half max. We'll be instead of waiting for a year or two years, we'll be having it on a two week wait, maybe a one week wait, that's what I want, and it will do really well.

A lot of people are, you know, just waiting, they're waiting, they want to get this defensive equipment, maybe in particular the defensive equipment, but offensive and defense, as much of that money is being spent on American-made equipment, that's the money that the European and Canada are spending, European countries mostly, and Canada. And they're spending that with the United States largely, and it's American-made, made in the U.S.A. as we say, weapons, munitions, supporting thousands of American jobs. This will increase.

[12:15:00]

We have the highest number of jobs. Right now, we have the most people working in the United States that we've ever had in the history of our country. We have the biggest investment ever made, $19.2 trillion, that's six times more than we've ever had. Think of it, six times. And what did that were tariffs. Without the tariffs, I think we would have done fine, like at about two or three.

The last administration had much less than 1 trillion invested for four years. We have 19.2 trillion invested in one year. We haven't gone into the extra almost a half a year, one and a half years, those numbers won't come out for a little while. So, we've have 19.2 trillion, not billion, not million, trillion with a T, invested in plants and equipment that's being built all over the country.

Eli Lilly is building plants, big drug, Merck, all of them. The drug companies are building. The car companies are building like crazy. In fact, as you probably saw a big announcement yesterday, Toyota is leaving Mexico, and they're going to build one of the biggest car manufacturing plants in the world, in Texas. That's because of the tariffs, because we don't mind if you build in Mexico, but if you build in Mexico, you have to pay 25 percent tariff.

If you build in Japan, or if you build in any place, China is a much higher tariff versus 100 percent tariff, because we don't want to lose our jobs. We don't want to have our workers lose their jobs. We have the -- we have the largest number of plants being built for the most money ever in the history of our country, car plants, AI plants, and all other plants, pharmaceutical plants, chips. We're not giving anything. All we're saying is, if you don't start, if we'll give them a year and a half to two years to build their plant, if they don't have that, they have to pay 100 percent, 200 percent, even 250 percent.

If they make a chip, or if they make a car, if they make pharmaceuticals. So, the pharmaceutical companies are moving in at record levels. There's never been anything like what's happening. Let me put it a different way, put it here in a more broad fashion. There has never been anything like that, like has happened with this country or any other country in the history of the world. There has never been growth. There's never been manufacturing plants being built.

We have so many being built, and in the big ones, like AI, some of the AI, we let them build their own electric plants. We force them to build. We don't want because the old grid that we have wouldn't be able to supply. They need, just as an industry, more energy than the entire country produces right now. When you think of it, which is incredible.

So, take all of the energy that the United States produces, and that one industry, which is so big, so powerful, it needs more than that. In fact, some people say almost double. So, this was my idea. I said you can never service that, you can't reinvigorate the grid, you can make it better, but nothing like that. You wouldn't be able to build, and we're leading China in AI, in most, just about everything, but we're leading China in AI, even in TikTok.

You know, I was watching somebody say, oh, the TikTok deal, it's so bad. Well, because they say, the deal was incredible, but they think the word that gets out is bad, except the numbers just came out, and I'm number one on TikTok, and all I do is talk about communism, right? So, it's sort of good. I used it to get elected too, but you know, you have to get your word out. But it just -- the numbers came out just a little while ago, and I was number one, some ridiculous number. I never heard of numbers like that, but number one, and all these entertainers are number 27, 29 It's crazy.

I don't even understand myself, but that means my words getting out about how great our country is, how successful our country is, and how bad communism is, and how bad these lunatics are that are running for election that don't sound good, don't think good, and don't look good. I don't see any looker. I don't see anybody with the look. You know, you need the look, I guess.

You need something, but they don't have it, and I think they'll fade fast. And it's not social democrats. This is not a social debt. These are communists that are running, and they don't want God. They don't want successful things to happen for our country. They don't want to have a successful country. I think they're sort of crazy.

[12:20:00]

As European nations rebuild their militaries, American equipment will be the largest beneficiary the defense companies are going to be making. Most of that equipment, they want the American equipment, because it works better. It's not a question of anything else. We make the best equipment in the world.

And to that end, I provided other leaders with an update on the steps who are taking to rapidly scale up production in the United States, and they wanted to hear that, because they don't really want to get it in four years, five years. I want to get it, like in a week. And we'll actually be at a point like that in the not too distant future with the plants that are being built. The defense plants. It's incredible.

Lockheed is building, I think, five. Some of them are building three, four, or five, and they're big ones. It's going to quadruple the output we have with the munitions and the basic equipment itself, whether it's a Patriot or Tomahawk missile or any of the missiles that we make many missiles different types for different occasions.

And just today at the summit, we announced the $3 billion of new defense investments with U.S. companies and Lockheed Martin will establish a world-class Patriot missile, sustainment facility, a big deal in Europe. They're given a tremendous incentive by Europe to do that. All goes to the benefit of us and Europe because they're getting the best equipment.

Northrop Grumman is moving forward with the sale of advanced American drone technology. We're actually the leader in drone tech. A lot of people don't know that. We have the -- we have the most sophisticated drones in the world. And we're real. I guess, with the leader, but we're -- we'll soon be the leader by many times over.

And Lockheed and Rheinmetall are announcing a partnership to build the Army Tactical Missile Systems, which is a big deal. Anduril is announcing a deal to build their new Barracuda missiles, which is a very highly sophisticated fast missile and we're doing that for Poland. Poland is doing very well, by the way, with a very, very good president, great president.

I think all of these agreements directly benefit the U.S. defense industry base. And what it really does, it doesn't mean, means jobs. And again, I have to just say that when Toyota announced yesterday, I wasn't that surprised, but everybody wanted to get that. That's the largest -- I think it's going to be the largest plant in the world, car plant, and they're moving into the United States.

And again, they're doing that to avoid paying their tariff, because if you build your product here, you pay no tariff. If you don't, you pay a 25 percent tariff, depending 35 percent sometimes, sometimes 100 percent, 200 percent, depending on what the product is. As an example, we're doing great on steel because we charge tariffs. So now, all of a sudden, the steel industry, which was absolutely dead a few years ago, I revived it in my first term, pretty good. And then they blew it in the Biden term. What a shame. They just blew it right out there. They had no idea what they were doing. And I quickly revived it at the beginning of my -- of this term year and a half. And we are the steel business is through the roof. We don't even make aluminum anymore. Now we're going to have the largest aluminum plant in the world being built in Oklahoma. I love Oklahoma. 77 out of 77 counties, three times, and it's great. It's a great state. They're going to be building the largest aluminum plant in the entire world in Oklahoma, starting very soon.

Over the course of the past two days, I had a number of excellent discussions with other leaders at the summit and held productive bilateral meetings with essentially all of them. We had dinner last night, just about all of them were there. President Erdogan of Turkey, as well as President Zelenskyy. And he just came in, as you probably saw, that little press conference.

And also, President Al-Sharaa of Syria, who's doing an unbelievable job in unifying Syria. What a job he's doing. Syria was a mess with what happened with the previous government, you know that, very dangerous place, and now it's just come together. He's done a fantastic job. People are talking about it. In every conversation, it was clear that America is back, and we're stronger and bigger and better than ever before. We have more jobs, as I said, than ever before. And we're respected again like maybe never before. We are so respected as a country.

[12:25:00]

That's why I wish I told the Secretary General Mark, I said, it's too bad the press could not see what's happening in this room. You saw the big round circle with all of the leaders of all of those countries. And I don't know, I think they should allow it. The theory is that they won't be speaking quite as freely, and it won't be quite as good, but who knows. It was amazing, actually. The unity in that room was incredible. The air, really I love, it was sort of pretty wild. There was a love in that room that was great.

So, this was a tremendously successful summit. And again, I want to thank President Erdogan, Turkey, and president -- so many of the presidents, presidents, prime ministers, they were all here from NATO, the NATO countries. And in particular, we have to thank the Secretary General Mark Rutte for doing a fantastic job. He really put on a tremendous -- his was just something he just -- he's a unifier, he's a tremendous unifier.

So, I could take a few questions. We've done a few of these already today, so I don't think we should take too many. I don't think we should take like. So, we're going to keep it a little bit short. And I know a lot of you are going home, some are going with me. So go ahead, please.

Sir. Yes, yes. No, no, no. The gentleman right here. The very tall gentleman, who's very insecure. He doesn't want to ask that question. He's a handsome guy, but he's very insecure. Go ahead. Do you want to shout it out? Give him a mic. How about giving him a mic. He shouted out.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President (inaudible) and yet, the Iran war seems to be a strategic dead end for you. Why are you apparently unable to end the Iran war?

TRUMP: So, I think we're doing just the opposite. The Iran war has been a tremendous military success, and you know, I can only answer the question by saying they're not going to have a nuclear weapon. I think it's been -- I was there for one reason that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. I call it. we denuclearize Iran, and that's happened. They will never have a nuclear weapon.

That stuff is so far down under a mountain. It's a granite mountain that collapsed on top of it. Take months to get it out. I think it's a tremendous success Iran, and you see the oil prices are lower than they were when I started. And people like to say that, but look, they have no military left, their air force is gone. As I said, their ships are gone. 159 ships are gone. They're at the bottom of the sea. Their radar is gone, everything's gone.

So, when you say not a success, it's a tremendous success. The fake news likes to say how well they're doing, they're doing terribly, they have 350 percent inflation. When the war started, they had like 6 percent, 5 percent. They have -- they want to make a deal, but they don't know how to make a deal. And then they go around shooting ships at night. I don't like that. You know, they're dealing with very fine people. They're dealing with Steve Witkoff. They're dealing with Jared Kushner and J.D. Vance. And they're dealing with Marco and Scott. They're dealing with great people.

But I don't if -- I don't know -- I think they're little loco, they're a little crazy, but they told us they'd like to go to the funeral, funeral of a very person who was killed a lot of people. Khomeini killed a lot of people over the years, and there for a long time. Don't forget, what we did should have been done 47 years ago. It could have been done anytime within four. This has gone on for -- they were the bully of the Middle East, so they're a much different country now.

In one day, all of their anti-aircraft things are gone. That doesn't mean they're not going to get a plane at some point, but all of it's gone, everything's gone, their leaders are gone. They had leaders, they're gone, and they had another set of leaders, they're gone. Now they have another set of leaders, they may be gone, who knows. And you know what, I may be gone too, because I'm their number one target. It's out all over the place. I'm the number one, because they're scum. That's the way they act, and that's the way they've done it for 47 years.

But I'm doing what's right for the country. I'm doing really what's right for the world. They have to be stopped. And they've killed thousands -- hundreds of thousands of people. They killed 52,000 protesters over the last three months. So, when you say we're not doing well, I think we're doing phenomenally well. Our military has been incredible. Plus, we had a blockade. Did we have a blockade? Did you ever see a blockade work that way? You know, for you that said we're not doing well there. We did great in Venezuela. That was a one-day war, and they're very good military. You know, it's a very military country. We took out one of the worst human beings in the world, Maduro, and we -- he's in jail, waiting for trial. But what he did to this country was incredible, including the fact, not only the drugs, but he had people pour into the country from prisons. They opened up their prisons, they allowed them to come in, we're getting them out. We're getting them all out.

But we have with the Biden open border policy with Kamala, as your border czar. Remember, she was a border czar, but she never called border patrol