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Inside Politics

Trump Hosts Iraqi Prime Minister At The White House; Ceasefire Collapses As Strikes Escalate, U.S. Reimposes Blockade; Trump Takes Questions During Meeting With Iraqi PM; Trump - Doesn't Believe Any Conspiracy Theories About Graham's Death; Trump On Iranian Leadership - Very Difficult People; Source - ICE Pausing Most Traffic Stops After Deadly Shootings; Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired July 14, 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]

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DANA BASH, ANCHOR AND CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Welcome to Inside Politics. We want to get straight to the White House. President Trump is hosting Iraqi Prime Minister al-Zaidi in the Oval Office. Let's listen.

As we wait for the English translation into Arabic for the Iraqi Prime Minister, let's talk to our panel a little bit. Before this show started, as the President was Stephen Collinson, welcoming the Iraqi Prime Minister. He was talking about how Iraq has tremendous potential wealth, and praising the Iraqi Prime Minister for how much he's done in a short period of time. Not surprisingly, talked to about him as a young, handsome man. Central casting is a big deal for this President.

But as we wait to actually hear from them and perhaps more importantly, the Q&A session that we hope he does with reporters there. We know that the thing overshadowing this and pretty much everything else that he does right now on the world stage is what's happening in neighboring Iran. The ratcheting up of the military action there.

STEPHEN COLLINSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICS REPORTER: Yeah. And the President has just in the last few minutes stepped back from his threat to levy tolls on ships, coming through the Strait of Hormuz, which itself was a response to Iran's threat to use its leverage in the strait by imposing those tolls. So yet another reversal from the President on the policy, and I think what that shows is that there is really no U.S. plan here, because the President is stuck in a vice that has been created by his own policies.

Iran has this leverage on the strait. It's not going to give it up. So where we are effectively now is back to where we were before the MOU was signed. As you were saying in the intro there, the missiles are flying again. That it's as if that MOU never happened. And the U.S. and the administration is fighting to get back to the point where it was before the war even started, which was when the strait was open. So I think a lot of the President's pronouncements are an element of frustration about the confined space he's in, and it begs the question, how does the United States ever get out of this?

BASH: And as we are speaking, Tamara, the Kuwaiti -- the Kuwaitis are saying that they are dealing with incoming artillery fire. So this is happening real time. Hold, please. Let's actually listen back in for Q&A.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Go ahead, please.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (Inaudible). How the system work. And Mr. President if I may.

TRUMP: Who you with?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm with Arabia (inaudible).

TRUMP: Well, we don't think we need the military there anymore. It's a very big operation. And what we do have is the oil companies are all going in now and they're doing partnerships with Iraq and they're getting along very well. The relationship is a whole big relationship where we don't need the military there. We're there to help them. We're there to protect them if need be, but we don't think that's going to be necessary. And their primary, I consider it an opponent. They might have considered a friend, but I consider that an opponent was Iran was a big burden on Iraq, because they were the bully of the Middle East, as you know. And we were just talking about that, but they're not going to have that problem anymore because Iran has been very much destabilized and really their military power is just a tiny fraction of what it was just four months ago.

So they're not going to have that problem. I think that it really, in a sense has given them freedom to do what they have to do.

[12:05:00]

And I think that's one of the reasons that our oil companies are going in there at levels that have never been seen before.

ALI AL-ZAIDI, PRIME MINISTER OF IRAQ (translated): Thank you for your question. According to the program of the government, this is to restrict the position of weapons to the state. And this is a basic point. And I have -- and this is like a decision. It's not an option. We received weapons by different factions and you ever surrender his weapon turned into, like a political civilian. We will cooperate with him. After the 30th of September, there is not any need for the presence of any faction, because factions is a need. It's not a profession. Any justification for their existence after the 30th of September. So by the end of this year or by the beginning of the next year. The sovereignty conference is the biggest conference in the region.

The Iraqi decision is backed by the hand of Iraqis only. And our security forces are capable of protecting their borders. After the 30th of September. Never except for any entity to carry weapons outside the control of the state. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you, President Trump. I have two questions. I was wondering if you could explain your changing thinking on Strait of Hormuz applying a 20 percent fee. How did you get to the decision you just announced?

TRUMP: So when I put that out yesterday, because we've been doing that for many, many years, it was never fair to me that. We would be guarding the strait when we basically don't take any -- we don't need the oil at all. And it wasn't important for us, but it was important for allies. It was important for people that we get along with very well, including the major Gulf State countries. So I put it out yesterday. I thought it was good. I was called by different people, different countries, kings and emirs and all of the people that we all know and we all love. And they've been frankly, they've been very strong partners. And they said we'd love to do it a different way.

We'd love to invest in the United States with billions and billions of dollars and continue our record setting, because we would -- there's never been a time like this with the United States with the factories, with the plants, with everything else. And we would like to invest tremendously in the United States as opposed to charging a fee. And I like that actually because I don't think anybody should be able to charge a fee for the strait or for any other strait relationship in terms of other sections of the world. I don't think anybody should be really in that position.

But we were doing it as a reimbursement. The Gulf States are going to invest a tremendous amount of money into the United States and that was very satisfactory to me. I think it's actually much better.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I can also ask, are you aware of why the FBI is looking into senator Graham's death? Have you gotten any updates on why they read his own?

TRUMP: Well, I don't know why because I think, he had a problem. His father had a very similar problem, as you know. It's very unique. At first, I heard it was clogged arteries because he did have clogged arteries. He had a problem with that. He was -- I wish he took better care of himself. I say, you can solve that problem. But, what happened is actually something that's very hard to detect. It was not related to the any blockage. It was a totally different thing. And supposedly and I've watched all of the medical reports.

I've had the doctors from the White House come in and explain what happened. And this is something that is very almost undetectable. And if it happens, there's not much you can do about it. It sounds unfortunate, but there's not much you can do about it. If you look at his father died of the same thing at about the same age. So there was not much. They say it's almost undetectable. You can detect it by if you have a very bad back, that's a sign. It's a bad sign. So if anybody has a bad back, it's a pretty rough thing to think about.

But the fact that's one of the primary signs and he would tell me he had a bad back, but little did anyone realize it was for that. So and when that bursts, which it did, it bursts, there's not much. So I don't see a lot of evil there. I don't -- I know there's all sorts of conspiracy theories going along, and I don't think the FBI, I think the FBI is wasting their time if they're doing that.

[12:10:00]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So to comment on the prior question, could the Hormuz strait hold idea for you, that's dead now. That's completely gone.

TRUMP: No. I just told you, you have Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait, primarily, and then others. They -- I spoke to all of them, and they would love to invest more money in the United States at record amounts, and that would be very acceptable. And this way, there's no fee. I don't like the concept of a fee. But at the same time, it's not fair that we're protecting this strait for the entire world, for China and everyone. I don't mind protecting it for China. I don't mind protecting it for anybody, but it's unfair that we're not in somehow compensated. And we've been doing this for many years. It it's bothered me.

25 years ago, it bothered me. During my first term, I was doing things like you have to invest in the United States. And -- but by doing it that way, there's no fee. They're investing and they're getting a return on their money and it's good. But they're going to be making massive investments into the United States, and I like that much better.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (inaudible) you yesterday when you discussed OPEC. There's been some reporting that Iraq pushing for changes to OPEC, a larger share, meaning that they might consider leaving the Prime Minister right here --

TRUMP: We have one idea, because here he is. Would you like to know about it?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you are you considering Mr. Prime Minister leaving OPEC or pushing for changes to President? And Mr. President, would you support --

TRUMP: Well, I support him. I supported him very early in the -- I endorsed him. Something I rarely do, but I've had great success it's endorsing. We just had Colombia, which was a big one. Argentina was a big one. We had many -- I've endorsed. I think, everybody I've endorsed from a foreign standpoint, they just win. And I've been hearing great things. I've come a student of a lot of history, and I do know a lot about the history of Iraq. And I watched what was happening in Iraq with the elections, and I put a very strong endorsement out, because I was very unhappy with the man that was supposed to win the election. And this great gentleman, I think he's going to end up being a great leader. He won. So I'm very happy about that. As far as OPEC, that's his decision, and you might ask him that question.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: OK. We're going to continue to monitor this meeting and the Q&A that the President and the Iraqi Prime Minister are doing with members of the press corps, and reporters who were there back here at the table. Just want to underscore one of the most important things that we've heard so far from the President, which is a little bit more of a fulsome explanation of why he did a 180, really in the past 24 hours on the Strait of Hormuz saying yesterday he was going to charge a toll. And then today, as we were talking about, announcing that he, instead of that, is going to have some kind of trade and investment deal with Gulf States.

And he said, I don't think that we should charge a fee. This is what he just said, which is 100 percent different from what he said yesterday. Tamara?

TAMARA KEITH, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, NPR: Yes. And it's not entirely surprising because the immediate response to his announcement yesterday was, oh, that's going to make the price of oil go up, which is exactly the opposite of what he needs politically. He needs oil prices to come down and stay down and to have some stability in that region. He also pointed out that the idea -- he doesn't think anyone should be charging a toll. It is possible that it was prevailed upon him that the U.S. charging a toll would then set a precedent that Iran would be very happy to carry forward as they continue to claim control of the Strait of Hormuz.

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I spoke yesterday with Senator Roger Wicker, who's the Armed Services Chairman, about this exact idea, and he was very clearly unenthused about the direction that the White House and the President was heading here. I'd be very interested to know many congressional leaders might have gotten a hold of the President to make it clear that they had some concerns. Speaker Johnson said at his press conference just a short time ago that they only briefly spoke about the issue when he was at the White House for about three hours yesterday. So I do think that it was going to be very difficult to implement and lawmakers were making this.

BASH: Let's going to go back in. The President is talking about why the U.S. is restarting a kinetic war with Iran.

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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I mean, they've been so badly injured. The arms, the legs, the face with the Soleimani, with the bomb. They, they call it the roadside bomb. Most people call it the roadside bomb. It's a disaster. And I killed him in my first administration. Had I not, it might be a different story today.

[12:15:00]

He was a mad genius. He was a mad probably a madman, but he was a general, and he had total control over the country. And I actually think the leaders of Iran were afraid of Soleimani, but I killed him. And by the way, with him went a very bad person also. They happened to be meeting each other at the airport. And a very bad person from Iraq happened to be a leader of Iraq happened to be killed in that same incident.

So I don't know if I did you a favor or not. I've never asked you that question. You probably would know better than me. But, no, I think that what we've done to Iran is we've taken away all of them -- almost all of their military capability.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (Inaudible).

ALI AL-ZAIDI, PRIME MINISTER OF IRAQ (translated): At that time, I was not in politics. In my visit, like I'd like to talk about the future.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President. Thank you for your time. Last year in May, the Prime Minister of Kurdistan Region, Masrour Barzani, signed at about $110 billion in energy jobs with U.S. companies here in Washington D.C., right? Mr. President, if Baghdad and I will work together better, that investment could grow, grow, grow. What is your message and advice to the leaders in Baghdad and I will to work together? Why I'm asking this question? Because you are America makers Mr. President.

TRUMP: I love this question. It's my favorite question so far by far. Thank you very much for the question. Look Baghdad, I think, and I and his country, we're going to make some tremendous music together. We haven't been dealing very much over the last four or five years with the previous administration. Iraq has tremendous potential because of their oil and because of the other things, but because of their oil. And we're going to be doing a lot of deals. We're going to create a lot of jobs for both countries, and we're going to be taking out a lot of oil. A lot of oil is coming out, and the American companies are doing it.

Mostly American companies now. They don't want to do business with others. They want to do business with America, and that's good. And that's one of the reasons that I felt so strongly that this was going to be a great Prime Minister, and I fought for that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How would you describe your relationship with regional government at this site, because Prime Minister had a statement on fully support you.

AL-ZAIDI (translated): (inaudible) just said. I look at Iraq as a buddy. Each part of --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: OK. As we continue to monitor this, then we will get back in if and when the president gets other questions on other topics. I just want to underscore what the president just said about why there is this military action going on in a pretty robust way compared to how it was just a few days ago. He said I wanted to give them a chance at making a deal. We had a deal two days ago. It was done. Then all of a sudden, they couldn't do it. And he said they shot first, and that was a big mistake that they shot first, because we've been knocking the hell out of them.

And so this is something that is obviously going to continue in the near future. And Dave Weigel, as that happens, I just want to put up on the screen how the American people feel about this. And it's not good. All adults on the question of the war in Iran going on for an extended period of time, 79 percent are not really excited about that. And then it pretty much falls along party lines, but even Republicans are not happy.

[12:20:00]

DAVID WEIGEL, POLITICS REPORTER, SENATOR: Yes, I think you heard that reflected in the way the President talked about it. Trying to shift the conversation to foreign policy successes he's had, which have been intervening, endorsing in Latin American elections. And Venezuela, I think, is the first domino in all of this. That was so successful that that you let that it led to hubris with regards to Iran. The White House does not like talking about it. How does it interact with normal people? Normal people are only thinking about the war in terms of what it does to gas prices, and I think temper set it up very well. There's not going to be any solution to war that the President can endorse that raises gas prices.

The country does not want to suffer any additional costs for what is going on in Iran, which the president does not like explaining. We've moved very, very far past the February, March discussions of what a democratic Iran would look like or a post nuclear Iran would look like. He just wants out of there as is the impression you get listening to him.

KEITH: Yeah. Senator Susan Collins was campaigning in Maine this past weekend. What's the toughest issue? She says affordability, energy prices, gas prices, heating oil, home heating oil prices. And she's a Republican, and she's campaigning on --

BASH: Yeah. Well, now it's going to be I.C.E. We're going to talk about that in one second. Just before we go to break, I just want to mention wonder one other thing, off topic of The Middle East that the president was talk was asked about, and that is the fact that the FBI, was at the home of the late senator Lindsey Graham. And whether or not the president thinks that that is a investigation worth doing, he talked about senator Graham's health and the fact that he didn't think that his friend took good enough care of himself, especially given his family history that senator Graham's own father died suddenly of a heart issue about the same age. And then President Trump said of his own FBI that they are wasting their time with looking into anything suggesting any potential foul play. So that was definitely noteworthy as well.

OK. We are going to keep monitoring the Oval Office for any news from the President. Coming up, the breaking news about two fatal shootings. I.C.E. says now that it will stop vehicle stops until further notice. It's a big change in procedure, and we have exclusive reporting on how we got here. Stay with us.

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BASH: The breaking news now is on the two fatal shootings by federal immigration officers over the past week. Both incidents involved vehicle stops, and now a source tells CNN's Priscilla Alvarez that I.C.E. will suspend most vehicle stops until further notice. It's a pretty big reversal of their tactics. Let's get straight to Priscilla for more on her reporting. Priscilla?

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Dana, this is certainly a significant development in the way that I.C.E. agents carry themselves in their immigration arrest moving forward, again, for now. Now according to a source who I spoke with, there was guidance that was sent out to I.C.E. agents, today. This was specific to the Enforcement and Removal Operations Branch. Those are the agents that are charged with the arrest and deportation of undocumented immigrants, essentially telling them to suspend the initiation of vehicle stops for now.

Now there is an exception for cases where they are executing a criminal warrant, but even in those cases, the guidance says that they are to coordinate with their partners. Now, again, this has we have been seeing an uptick in vehicle stops in recent months because the agents are under pressure to ramp up the number of immigration arrests. And so, they have been frequently leaning on these vehicle stops to do so.

And, of course, what happened last week and what happened this week, last week in Texas, this week in Maine, was that that ended with the fatal shooting of two individuals, neither of whom was the target of those immigration enforcement operations. So, again, we are now learning that there is a change in tactics here moving forward until further notice.

Now a spokesperson for immigration and customs enforcement said the following, "We are always evaluating our procedures to keep our officers safe and criminals off our streets." We will not disclose or discuss law enforcement tactics. Now I will note that we are learning about people who are planning to investigate what happened in Maine just yesterday with the death of the 26-year-old Colombian man.

The Department of Homeland Security Inspector General, plans to investigate the FBI as well and now also the main attorney general. Still so many questions here over what unfolded in the moments of that shooting. Surveillance footage up until now has shown some of what led up to it, but still a lot of questions, and questions, Diana, that will not be answered by body worn cameras. The Department of Home Security telling me that the agents involved in the main shooting, as those involved in Texas, did not have those on their person.

BASH: Can I just ask you a question on that before I let you go? Is my memory correct that after Alex Pretti was killed that then Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, said that the practice would be to have agents wearing body cams? That's exactly right.