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President Trump Speaks Before Trip to Memphis; Dozens Injured as Iranian Missiles Strike Israel; New York City's LaGuardia Airport Closed After Deadly Runway Collision. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired March 23, 2026 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: -- Navy Air Force, every division, their radar.

[10:00:03]

We also blew up all of their anti-aircraft and communication. So, they have no telecommunication. So, there is a lack of -- I would imagine, a lack of coordination.

REPORTER: if you're worried about the miscommunication --

TRUMP: Well, we think. We think. All we can do is think. Look, we have numerous leader groups, they've all been killed, very dangerous position. Khameini was killed. Khameini's son is unavailable. Nobody knows what happened to him. I can say they haven't seen him there either. Something is going on with him, but regardless, I don't consider him really the leader. But they do have some leaders left because we blew up group number one, group number two, a lot of group number three, but we think we have people that are very representative of the country and will do a good job in reconstruction (ph).

REPORTER: Elon Musk has offered to Elon Musk has offered to paid TSA workers during this DHS shutdown. Is this something that you've been speaking to him about?

TRUMP: Yes, I'd love it. I think it's great. Let him do that. And I want to thank ICE because they stepped in so, so strongly. They'll do great. And if that's not enough, I'll bring in the National Guard. We're not going to have the Democrats destroy our country. These people are the most destructive, sick people, the Democrats. They want -- and they're fighting for this. They're fighting for men in women's sports. They're fighting transgender for everybody. Everybody go out, get your kid a nice operation and change the sex of your kid.

They're fighting for -- no, think of it. They don't want you to do voter I.D. You walk into a booth in California, if a person who's doing voting an official asks you for identification, they're subject to being arrested. What's wrong with this country?

So, we're fighting it hard, and I think they should because the Democrats are being blamed for the shutdown and it's their fault and they're getting killed. That's why when I announced yesterday about ICE, the Democrats called, we want to settle, we want to settle. And I told the people, don't settle. Don't settle because we have something bigger. Only settle if you get the Save America Act, voter I.D., and so important, proof of citizenship, et cetera. Thank you very much.

REPORTER: Whose idea was that, putting ICE in the airport?

TRUMP: We're dealing really --

REPORTER: Whose idea was it?

TRUMP: Mine. That was mine.

REPORTER: And can I ask you, you said there are --

TRUMP: That was like the paperclip. You know the story of the paperclip? 182 years ago, a man discovered the paperclip. It was so simple and everybody that looked at it say, why didn't I think of that? ICE was my idea. I called -- first person I called was Tom Homan. I said, what do you think? He said, I think it's great. Then I saw today there was some masks on. I didn't think the masks were appropriate. I put out a statement and I asked him, would it be possible to take off the mask because they should wear a mask when they're dealing with the murderers and the thugs let into our country

REPORTER: What's the detail? You said there's many points of agreement with Iran right now.

TRUMP: Many.

REPORTER: What -- can you give us a few of those?

TRUMP: Many, like 15 points, 15 points.

REPORTER: Did Iran just said yes to all?

TRUMP: Well, they're not going to have a nuclear weapon. That's number one. That's number one, two, and three. They will never have a nuclear weapon.

REPORTER: They said yes to that?

TRUMP: They've agreed to that.

REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE) illegal migrant arrest at airports, sir?

TRUMP: Arrests?

REPORTER: Will we see ICE arresting illegal migrants at airports?

TRUMP: Yes. Yes. That's why the Democrats are going crazy because they've allowed by what they did and the hold up, we put ICE who are a very high level -- I mean, they really are a high level group of people. And they love it because they're able to now arrest illegals as they come into the country. That's very fertile territory. But that's not why they're there. They're there -- they're really there to help.

REPORTER: Are you talking to Iran directly?

REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE) leads to no enrichment whatsoever, even for medical purposes, civilian purposes?

TRUMP: They have. Thank you. Thank you.

REPORTER: What about the Strait of Hormuz? Who's going to be in control of that?

TRUMP: That would be open very soon if this works.

REPORTER: How soon? And who is in control of it? Will Iran still be able to control the flow of oil?

TRUMP: Be jointly controlled.

REPORTER: By who?

TRUMP: Maybe me. Maybe me.

REPORTER: You want the United States --

TRUMP: Me and the ayatollah, whoever the ayatollah is, whoever the next ayatollah. Look, and it'll also be a form of -- a very serious form of a regime change.

Now, in all fairness, everybody's been killed from the regime. They're really starting off. There's automatically a regime change. But we are dealing with some people that I find to be very reasonable, very solid. The people within know who they are. They're very respected. And maybe one of them will be exactly what we're looking for.

Look at Venezuela, how well that's working out. We are doing so well in Venezuela with oil and with the relationship between the president- elect and us.

[10:05:00]

And maybe we find somebody like that in Iran.

REPORTER: Are you considering any more options to lower the price of oil while these talks --

TRUMP: The price of oil will drop like a rock as soon as a deal is done. I guess it already is today. No, we have a very serious chance of making a deal. That doesn't guarantee anything. I'm not guaranteeing anything. I'm not going to come out here in a week or two weeks and have you all say, oh, you said -- I didn't say anything. All I'm saying is we are in the throes of a real possibility of making a deal. And I think if I were a betting man, I'd bet for it. But, again, I'm not guaranteeing anything. They want to make a deal very badly. Thank you.

REPORTER: What changes would you like to see in DHS under Markwayne Mullin?

TRUMP: Well, he's going to be fantastic. He'll make his own change. He's already given me a list of people he wants to bring. He's a fantastic guy. I think he's just the right guy. You all know him. He's a very open, smart guy, very successful actually in business, which people don't know, and he's a friend of mine. I think Markwayne is going to be fantastic. Thank you.

REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE) on the plane crash that happened here?

TRUMP: Terrible. They made a mistake. It's a dangerous business. That's terrible. Thank you.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: All right. So, the president of the United States spending quite a bit of time there on the tarmac in West Palm Beach getting ready to fly off to Memphis, Tennessee. The president answering reporters' questions, giving a pretty optimistic assessment of where things stand with Iran right now earlier in the day. He said that the United States has had, and I'm quoting him now, very good and productive conversations with Iran regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East. And he also just suggested that Iran seems to be agreeing to abandon any nuclear ambitions. Pretty optimistic assessment right there.

I want to go to Kevin Liptak, our White House correspondent. What jumped out at you, Kevin?

KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes. And the president is providing some more details about that post from earlier today, both about who is participating in these discussions and also what exactly he hopes to get out of them. He says that his envoy, Steve Wtikoff, and Jared Kushner are the ones who are dealing with Iran. He said that they were talking late into the evening last night. He says he expect them to have a phone call today before, in his words, very, very soon meeting in person.

He was less specific about who exactly they're talking to on the Iranian side. He said it was a very respected leader. He says it was not Mojtaba Khamenei, the current supreme leader, who he essentially wrote off as meaningless and ineffectual, but he did say that they were talking with some individual inside Iran for what he described as fairly positive discussions. He says that they were going, quote, perfectly, and that if they continue down that path, that the war would be able to end, in his words, very, very substantially, and so optimistic comments from the president.

He told Kaitlan Collins, who's down there, that he has in mind sort of a list of 15 points that the Iranians will have to agree to as part of these discussions. He said point one, two and three is that they not be able to obtain a nuclear weapon. He says he doesn't want to see enrichment. She also pressed him on whether Iran would be able to keep the highly enriched uranium that they currently have that buried under the Isfahan nuclear site, and he said that the U.S. wanted to get the nuclear dust, as he called it. We want to get it back. We think we're going to get it back.

She also asked about the Strait of Hormuz, whether under any prospective ceasefire agreement, Iran would still be able to control that very critical waterway that they've effectively shut off and caused oil prices to spike. He says, in his view, it would be jointly controlled by both Iran and the United States. And so I think in listening to the president, it's still clear that a number of these points obviously still need to be fleshed out. Obviously that's the point of negotiations, but the president clearly very optimistic. And just one final point, he does seem, at least at this point, optimistic that, quote, regime change could happen. He called it a, quote, very serious form of regime change.

Of course, as we know, the previous regime is still in power in Iran, the supreme leader is the son of the former supreme leader. The IRGC still maintains power in that country. But the president, in his view, seems to see some glimmer of opening or some kind of softening among the -- whoever he's talking to and whoever his envoys are talking to, that leads him to believe that there is a regime in place and leadership in place that can be dealt with going forward.

And so I think the president talking far more optimistically about the prospects of diplomacy than we have ever heard him over the course of this three week conflict, Wolf?

BLITZER: Yes, very important point. And earlier in the day, he posted on social media. He said the tenor and tone of the U.S.-Iranian discussions that have been going on in the past few days, he said, have been detailed, in depth and constructive, and they will continue, he said, throughout the week.

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I have instructed the Department of War to postpone any and all military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for a five-day period subject to the success of the ongoing meetings and discussions. A very upbeat statement from the president of the United States, very different than what we've heard in earlier days. Any understanding of why this has all changed? I guess he's applauding the work of his diplomat, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner in working out some sort of deal with the Iranians.

LIPTAK: Yes. And you're right to point that out. It was just on Friday afternoon when the president was leaving here, when he told reporters that he was not interested in pursuing a ceasefire. He said that very explicitly. In other points over the last week, he has said he didn't think that the Iranians were serious about reaching a deal. So, clearly, something did shift over the weekend. Of course, we know on Saturday night he issued this ultimatum that if Iran did not open the Strait of Hormuz that he would strike a power plant in that country.

What he heard and what his envoys heard over the weekend from regional officials was that that would cause an enormous amount of escalation and retaliation. It would be multiple steps up the escalation ladder if Iran were to retaliate on energy strike sites in the Gulf, or potentially even on desalination facilities in some of these Gulf nations, which really rely on them for all of their fresh water.

And I think it was clear that the president had essentially boxed himself into a corner by issuing that ultimatum. And what he's doing now is essentially expanding the window that he has to retaliate. He's given it five days, essentially, for the Iranians to sort of come to the negotiating table and talk. Clearly, he has been rewarded in some ways by what we've seen in the markets this morning. We know that that's a barometer that the president often sets for himself.

And so it seems evident that the president is looking for a way to end this conflict through negotiations. Whether he actually finds a deal that he can agree with and that he can sign off on, that's the big unanswered question.

BLITZER: Yes, lots of unanswered questions right now.

Kevin Liptak at the White House, thank you very much. We'll stay in very close touch with you.

I want to go to Jeremy Diamond right now. He is joining us live from Tel Aviv. Jeremy, did we get potentially a major step forward in avoiding any major escalation in this war this week? I know that there have been a lot of reports that there seem to be some significant potential differences between the Trump administration and the Netanyahu government in Israel over what's happening next. What are you hearing?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, I think it's very difficult to know for now whether what President Trump is saying is actually reflecting the reality in these conversations. And I say that mainly because we have seen President Trump give one message after another, sometimes conflicting, oftentimes aimed at trying to move the markets, at trying to affect oil prices, both of which he seems to have achieved by putting this message out this morning as markets were opening.

But beyond that, it's also the fact that, for now, President Trump is the only person we are hearing from with this kind of rosy assessment about the state of talks, of the existence, in fact, of any negotiations between the United States and Iran. Because as President Trump tweeted this morning that there were negotiations with Iran, that they were very productive and therefore he was going to postpone these strikes, we heard an immediate denial from Iran, which said via it's a statement from its foreign ministry, that there is no dialogue between the United States and Iran.

They did say that there were, quote, initiatives from some regional countries aimed at reducing tensions, but that the message that Iran gave to those regional countries was this, quote, we are not the party that started this war, and all those requests should be referred to Washington.

So, at least publicly, the Iranians are dismissing the notion of any kind of breakthrough or productive negotiations in order to actually end this war. We also haven't heard anything from the Israelis. The Qataris, for their part, have said that they're not involved in any of these negotiations. As far as we understand it, there are two countries that are involved there, Egypt and Turkey, that have passed some messages between the two sides.

But the president is going much further than that. He's indicating that there are negotiations, that they're speaking to someone very important in Iran. We just don't know who that is. We don't know if that's somebody with actual authority over the current situation in the government. And so I think we need to take a lot of what the president has said with a grain of salt, and we'll go and dive into our reporting to see how much of it checks out.

BLITZER: All this happening, Jeremy, over the past few days, there have been some pretty successful Iranian and Hezbollah, for that matter, strikes against very civilian targets in Israel, including very sensitive area in Dimona, in the southern part of Israel, not far from Israel's nuclear facilities there. Anything happening today, because a lot of Israelis have been injured in those strikes?

[10:15:00]

DIAMOND: Yes, that's right, Wolf. I mean, yesterday we saw you know, one of the worst case scenarios of these strikes, strikes on two different residential areas in Southern Israel, direct impacts from Iranian ballistic missiles. These are not just those cluster munitions, but these are the full warhead that can weigh upwards of 500 kilos of explosives packed into just one of these. And they hit a residential area in Dimona, a residential area in the southern Israeli city of Arad. In Dimona, there were 54 people who were injured. In Arad, 88 were wounded, 10 of whom were taken to hospital in serious condition.

And then today we've seen another barrage of rockets from Hezbollah aimed at Northern Israel, where in the town of Kiryat Shmona, two people were wounded by rocket fire, one of whom is in serious condition. And yesterday, Wolf, we also saw in the north a man who was seriously wounded while driving in his vehicle. It was initially believed to have been a Hezbollah rocket attack, but today the Israeli military is disclosing that it was in fact a misfired artillery shell from Israeli positions. So, friendly fire in that case, an Israeli artillery shell seriously wounding an Israeli civilian in Northern Israel.

The Israelis are insisting that they are still able to intercept the overwhelming majority of these Iranian ballistic missiles, 92 percent, they say. But I can tell you that as we are now entering the fourth week of this conflict, there's significant concern among the Israeli public about this war of attrition that is now developing between Israel and Iran, and the fact that Iran is finding ways to get through Israel's air defense is either in those two ballistic missile attacks yesterday, or they're increasing use of these cluster munitions that are causing impacts all across Israel. Wolf?

BLITZER: Yes. A lot of people, I'm sure, are asking questions about Israel's Iron Dome, which had been really successful in preventing these rockets and missiles and drones from entering Israel. And now all of a sudden we're seeing some significant damage as a result of these Iranian attacks.

Jeremy Diamond, stay safe over there. We'll stay in close touch with you as well. And still ahead, at least two people are now dead, dozens more injured ever after a devastating runway collision over at LaGuardia Airport in New York. And we'll go live to the scene. That's coming up next.

And ICE at the airport, federal agents ICE agents deploying to assist unpaid TSA officers. Will it help with the hours long wait times we're seeing across the country?

Stay with us. Lot's going on. You're in The Situation Room.

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BLITZER: We're covering major breaking news out of New York. Two people are dead, dozens injured in a devastating runway collision at LaGuardia Airport. The Air Canada plane slammed into a fire truck as the flight was landing. The collision at more than a hundred miles an hour killed both the pilot and the co-pilot.

Here's the air traffic control tower speaking to that fire truck as the tragedy unfolded.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Truck 1 and Company, LaGuardia Tower?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Truck 1 and Company.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Truck 1 and Company, LaGuardia Tower requesting across four at Delta.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Truck One and Company cross four at Delta.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Frontier 4195 to stop there please. Stop, stop, stop, stop. Truck 1, stop, stop, stop.

Stop, Truck 1, stop. Stop, Truck 1, stop.

JAZZ 646, I see you collided with the vehicle. Just hold position. I know you can't move. Vehicles are responding to you now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: We're covering all the angles. CNN's Shimon Prokupecz is over at LaGuardia for us. CNN Aviation Correspondent Pete Muntean is at Ronald Reagan International Airport in Washington, D.C.

Shimon, what are you learning, first of all, this morning,

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: So, we're just learning now, Wolf, that a flight attendant, a flight attendant who survived this crash was actually outside the plane when rescue workers arrived here just before midnight last night. They found her still strapped in her seat and just the force, the force of this crash, throwing her from the plane and onto the runway. This all happening, as I said, around midnight. The -- as you can hear on that air traffic control audio, a fire truck, a crash truck that is driven and occupied by Port Authority police officers, was cleared to cross the runway to head to another emergency, a United flight that was requesting some assistance. And it was during that time that the Canadian error, their plane was coming in and then coming in over a hundred miles an hour, and then there was this collision. The two pilots sadly died.

Now, the NTSB and other investigators are here. They are investigating. Right now, there are a lot of questions over what and why and how this truck was cleared seemingly at the same time as the plane was coming in. And, normally, we would hear from the NTSB on the day of an incident. So, hopefully, later today they will update us.

There were nine people who remained in the hospital. There were 72 passengers, about 41 were transported to a hospital, 32 were released, and so 9 remain in the hospital.

And I'm also told that there was surveillance video, as you can imagine, Wolf, I was talking to a source, there's cameras all over this airport. So, NTSB has that video. They can clearly see the crash. And what I'm told is you can see the plane crashing into the middle of the crash truck, which perhaps is how the two officers that were seated in the front survived.

[10:25:03]

But this crash just so horrific, it flipped that fire truck on its side and obviously the nose of that plane completely gone. And so now we wait to hear more from investigators.

BLITZER: Yes, horrible situation indeed. Shimon, stand by.

Pete Muntean, you're at Reagan National airport for us. You're our aviation correspondent. Walk us through what you're learning, and I know you're learning a lot, about how this investigation is unfolding.

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: What is very clear, Wolf, from the early data is that this crash occurred at very high speed. This Air Canada flight operated by JAZZ Air Aviation had just touched down on runway four there at LaGuardia. That's one of the main runways there, and was still decelerating when this collision occurred at around 115 -- between 115 and 90 knots. So, that's the unit used, the nautical unit used in aviation. Meaning this crash occurred between 130 and 100 miles an hour.

You have to think of this like the force you would see in a T-bone collision that you would see on the highway, two cars traveling at highway speed. That's roughly about 100 miles an hour of collision force, this is roughly the same.

Of course, it will be up to investigators to determine exactly where and when this collision occurred. Although I want you to look at the early data from FlightRadar 24 in which they plot out point by point which point Air Canada Express Flight 8684 was going down the runway, and then approached Taxiway Delta, which is the point you heard in that air traffic control audio where this truck, referred to as Truck 1 on the air traffic control audio, was told to cross across the runway. Then you heard the tower controller there and the control tower at LaGuardia frantically tried to stop that truck.

Then in that data, you see a bit of continuation of data there to Taxiway Echo. That's about halfway down the runway. That seems to be where everything ultimately came to a stop because of the physics involved here.

I want you to listen now to this very telling air traffic control audio that occurred about 18 minutes after the collision itself, in which a controller in the tower seems to say, I messed up here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That wasn't good to watch.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, I know. I was here. I tried to reach out to them. We were dealing with an emergency earlier. I messed up.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, man, you did the best you could.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MUNTEAN: Important to remember here that this fire truck was responding to another incident on the airport involving a United Airlines flight that had to abort its takeoff twice. There was concern about some odor coming from likely the brakes there. It's especially hard on an airplane when you have to stop very quickly in boarding a takeoff.

Some big questions here about the communications, where the actual breakdown occurred. We know, even from the investigation of the January 29th, 2025 midair collision, only a few paces from here at Reagan National Airport, that radio transmissions can be imperfect. Pilots can do what's called stepping on one another where they're both transmitting at the same time, making transmissions and radio transmissions garbled and unintelligible. And so that can be something that is at play here.

Also, of course, the fatigue of the air traffic controllers, this occurred very late at night, and we know air traffic controllers are really stretched to the limit. Many working six-day weeks of ten hour shifts, mandatory overtime because of a years-long, nationwide shortage of air traffic controllers, of course, something the NTSB we will look into here as it is just beginning its investigation and just gathering all of the evidence. The airport closed until at least 2:00 P.M., likely could be closed later as investigators sort out everything on the scene there.

BLITZER: Yes, they got to learn precisely what happened to make sure it never ever happens again.

Pete Muntean, thank you very much, Shimon Prokupecz, thanks to you as well. We'll stay in close touch with both of you. Also coming up immigration and Customs enforcement agents headed to at least 13 airports across the country to help with extreme security lines. Ryan Young is live from the world's busiest airport, Atlanta's Hartsfiel- Jackson, one of the cities seeing the longest lines.

RYAN YOUNG, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Travelers upset, long lines again. When will the misery end? It's something that we're still trying to figure out, but at the same time, more security being added to the airport. We have so much more coming up in a live report.

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