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Fire on USS Gerald Ford Raged for More Than 30 Hours, Two Sailors Received Treatment for Non-life-threatening Injuries; Iran Threatens U.S. Navy Facilities in Red Sea; U.S. Gas Prices Soar Amid War With Iran; Top U.S. Counterterrorism Official Resigns Over Iran War; Utah Mother Found Guilty of Murdering Her Husband. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired March 17, 2026 - 13:30   ET

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

[13:30:00]

HELENE COOPER, PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: -- where you know, which areas you can go to. Most of the crew can't go strolling along on the flight deck wearing those because they're doing flight operations all day. And those fighter jets are taking off and landing on the carrier. So they're continuing all of this while at the same time their interior circumstances, their living circumstances have gotten a lot harder.

For the mission, the second part of your question, they've continued their flight operations. They have continued to launch fighter jets into the air to do these bombing runs in Iran. They're continuing to do these catapult takeoffs and then the arrested, what they call the controlled crash landings onto this aircraft carrier. So that part is continuing. It's just a whole lot harder right now for the crew who are sleeping all over the place.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Yeah, they're doing the work. And we didn't even get to the toilet problems that you detail in your story. But if people go and look at it, they will be able to read your story in its entirety.

Helene Cooper, thank you so much for sharing your reporting with us. We do appreciate it.

And still ahead, another day, another price surge at the pump. We'll take a closer look at how fuel shortages could trickle down to the global supply chain and impact your wallet. Stay with us for that.

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[13:35:12]

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": While the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed with no plans to reopen it at the moment, it's not the only critical waterway that experts are worried about. For the first time, Iran is making explicit threats against the U.S. military in the Red Sea, saying those assets are a potential target for Iran's armed forces. Now, some industry insiders worry the Red Sea could become a second choke point in the region, even if the current impacts would be marginal in comparison. Americans are already feeling the pinch from Iran's block on the Strait of Hormuz, which is expected to jack up the price of food, helium, aluminum, and fuel.

I want to bring in Gene Seroka, the Executive Director of the Port of Los Angeles, the busiest in the United States. Thank you for taking the time. Good to see you in person here on the East Coast.

Look, last week you told Reuters the Port of L.A. was largely insulated from major disruptions caused by the war. Is that still the case? What factors are you monitoring here?

GENE SEROKA, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, PORT OF LOS ANGELES: Omar, good afternoon. And that's right. Most of our trade, about 95 percent, is with the Pacific Rim of Asia. So those goods are flowing smoothly. Imports, both retail goods as well as inputs for American factories. On the export side, it's mostly agricultural products. But the ship fuel prices have more than doubled over the last two-and-a-half weeks.

And so that's what I was going to ask you about. I mean, specifically East Asia, they get a much larger portion of their fuel that passes through the Strait of Hormuz than the United States does. And so I start to think, well, as fuel prices go up, businesses and shipping companies might be more hesitant to ship the volume that they have been to this point.

We saw Trump's Economic Advisor, Kevin Hassett, say they are starting to see signs Asian economies may be starting to pull back, a few qualifiers there. But is that something you are either seeing or hearing at this point?

SEROKA: No, not at all. You can fuel up at the Port of Los Angeles, in Felixstowe in the U.K., Rotterdam on the continent. So as these ships traverse their east-west trades, they'll be able to find fuel, albeit at a very high price point.

JIMENEZ: And you know, when you look at that price point in particular, it's a little bit more of what Hassett said this morning, saying the administration has a plan for every corner of the disruption, from fertilizer to getting fuel to the West Coast and so on.

From your perspective, what either -- potential disruption are you or either the shipping executives that you work with either preparing for the possibility of or are most concerned with?

SEROKA: Well, we're watching both unfold in real time, Omar. One is that now, for about 18 days, no ships have really traversed the Strait of Hormuz. That's about 2,000 vessels that would normally go in and out over that time period.

And just as you started with in the opening, it says various commodities and fuel. Now, the Red Sea also offers another glimpse into what disruption could be as well. And this has been ongoing for about three-and-a-half, four years now with the Houthi rebels.

Transits over the Suez Canal are down about 80 percent during that time. And most shipping lines going to Europe and the U.K. have been going around the Horn of Africa to get adding some 14 to 20 days in transit. So we're not seeing normal paths on that westbound side.

For us here, it's about making sure that that supply chain stays intact. And the fuels that we use for our ships going back to Asia can all be loaded up in the United States.

JIMENEZ: And I just wanted to mention on the Red Sea because, you know, if you're looking at a map, you see it's just on the other side of Saudi Arabia there. And I mentioned that any threats to it at this point would be minimal to its current traffic. But that's only because in the last few years, there has been so much rerouting around that area after many of those ships were targeted in 2023.

SEROKA: That's right. And when I lived in the Middle East, I was stationed in Dubai --

JIMENEZ: Yeah.

SEROKA: -- covered 22 countries for American president lines. We had the Somali rebels that were going after ships in that area. Today, the technology is so much greater. The speed of these bandits going after the commercial ships is that much more prevalent. So they've gone around the Cape of Good Hope now for the better part of that time period and staying away from that treacherous area of the Red Sea.

JIMENEZ: And you know, I was watching your -- you had put out a news briefing, your cargo news briefing, and your year-to-date volume at the port is down compared to this point last year. But you said that was largely due to pre-tariff rushes that we saw at this point last year.

Can you just compare the impact tariffs have had on your operations and activity at the port versus something like this?

SEROKA: Yeah, it's been a real roller coaster on the tariff side. When hard policy comes out, typically importers really slow down their cargo. When their policy is softened and tariffs come down, you start seeing windows of opportunity on the import side and cargo volume really picks up.

This is a little different sphere. About 10 percent of world trade goes through the Middle East, again to those sub-regions of the Arabian Gulf, Red Sea and East Africa, separate and apart from the trans-Pacific or trans-Atlantic trades.

[13:40:00]

And in our case, we're not sharing vessels, crews or assets, a real discrete trade in the Trans-Pacific. But all eyes on the Middle East because many of our carriers and customers that call the Port of Los Angeles also do business in the Middle East. And their focus and attention right now is all right there. JIMENEZ: As those prices affect the global fuel prices, everybody seems to be getting a piece of that. Gene Seroka, really appreciate you taking the time for being here in person. Good to see you.

SEROKA: Thank you. Good to see you, Omar.

JIMENEZ: All right, meanwhile, still ahead, a senior intelligence official appointed by President Trump resigns over the war with Iran, specifically the fact that, in his words, Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States. We'll have much more on that and what the White House is saying, coming up.

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[13:45:26]

KEILAR: Back now to the Breaking News and the war with Iran, the Director of National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, a very controversial figure, abruptly resigning his post today.

In his resignation letter posted on social media, Kent directly disputes the official White House explanation for launching the war.

JIMENEZ: Yeah, Kent wrote on social media that, "Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby." Again, something the White House is pushing back pretty forcefully on, but let's talk about this.

I'm joined now by former Deputy Director of National Intelligence and CNN National Security Analyst, Beth Sanner. Beth, let's just start with the framing of this departure. Obviously, on one hand, he's coming out and saying that he can't support the war with Iran. On the other hand, he's blaming it on Israel.

He's got a little bit of an anti-semitic past, controversial past, at the very least, I'll say. How are you viewing this departure here?

BETH SANNER, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, I mean, there's obviously political implications here, which is a little bit outside my territory, but I think it's really, really clear that Joe Kent was unqualified to be the Head of NCTC.

This controversy around him being a supporter of white nationalists and hiring proud boys and people who espouse very, very radical right- wing views, he talked about conspiracies. He said the Secret Service was behind the assassination attempt on Trump. I mean, he has said pretty crazy things and so, you know, I think that we should be very clear about that.

That said, he is a decorated war hero. He did have a personal tragedy with his wife, but these things, you have to kind of buck it on one hand, and you still have to say, OK, this was a principled move. He believed in something. But the basis for that is in your kind of anti- semitism land to some degree. KEILAR: Yeah, and I wonder what you think of the reaction that we're seeing from Capitol Hill, because you have some Democrats who I think, they read the first, like the first line or line-and-a-half even, Iran pose no imminent threat, and they say, there, I agree with that.

SANNER: Right.

KEILAR: And then maybe they don't read the rest of the letter, because there's a lot in there that even, let's see, what else? He says, a disastrous Iraq war. He talks about, and I'm not talking about Iran, he's saying the Iraq war.

SANNER: Yeah, I don't know about that.

KEILAR: He says the Israelis drew the U.S. into --

SANNER: Yeah.

KEILAR: He says that he lost his wife in a war manufactured by Israel. How do you see people who oppose the president's war in Iran sort of jumping onto this?

SANNER: Exactly. So, you know, this is the thing I feel like we all struggle with. We should be able to hold two thoughts in our head at the same time. The world and humans are complex. There is nuance here, right? And you can agree with one sentence and disagree with the rest of it.

Just, you know, I think people are kind of celebrating because they want to take a political jab. But let's just say what we believe. Yes, there was no imminent threat. You know, that is a fact, that Iran was not two weeks away from a nuclear bomb. That is a fact, right?

It is also a fact that Joe Kent tried to change the analysis about Tren de Aragua coming out of the National Intelligence Council. It is also a fact that he wanted to take over all the counterintelligence role from the FBI and others because he wanted to claim that the Antifa and that leftists in this country, U.S. citizens, were a bigger threat than the white nationalists that he supported.

So I think that, you know, we have to like kind of grasp this complexity here that this person should never have been in that position. He did nothing at NCTC to make America safer. In fact, he threatened American citizens and their rights by trying to take over these databases that would have had U.S. citizens.

JIMENEZ: I want to just zoom out here a little bit because, obviously, this is coming from the Director of the National Intelligence Office, DNI Gabbard was his boss. She previously opposed regime change wars and previously was out of favor with the administration over that.

Just about a year ago, she testified to Congress that Iran was not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon, which is directly contradicting Israel's claims that Iran was racing toward a bomb.

[13:50:00]

Do you see this move, this resignation having any sort of effect on her or at the very least her standing in the administration?

SANNER: Well, it should. If everybody is standing up for the things that they believed in for their entire lives and actually were conducting themselves based on their beliefs and their morals, then we should see more of this.

But what we have seen is that people seem to have forgotten what they believed in. She ran in 2020 on a ticket for the presidency of the United States that was literally focused on opposing the first Trump administration, saying that these chicken shit lunatics or something in his cabinet were driving us to a dangerous war with Iran. That was her anti-war t-shirts, you know, no war with Iran.

This was 2020, folks.

KEILAR: Yeah.

SANNER: Like, you know, so yeah, if she was principled, she would resign based on this, right?

KEILAR: One more quick thing before we let you go, which is Marco Rubio, when he came out shortly after the war started, said that Israel was going to strike Iran and the U.S. knew that Iran would respond by striking U.S. targets.

SANNER: Right.

KEILAR: Which then sort of gave some people the impression, certainly critics of Trump, the impression of, OK, well, did the U.S. get into this just because of Israel? And it appears actually the reporting is, no, this is a real joint effort, you know.

SANNER: Yeah.

KEILAR: How do you see that?

SANNER: Yeah.

KEILAR: Because as you're talking about holding two things in your head at once.

SANNER: I think that Marco Rubio was looking for an imminency --

KEILAR: Argument.

SANNER: -- argument in order to justify because, you know, international law and all of these things, he was trying to make that argument and grasp that, you know, whatever kind of information he could to put this story together. But, you know, look, Netanyahu has wanted us to go to war with Iran forever.

He, during the Obama administration, went behind Obama's back, went to the Hill and tried to undermine the president of the United States at that time to scuttle JCPOA. So this is a consistent Israeli thing, but I think it's also a consistent thing for President Trump and others.

JIMENEZ: Beth Sanner, appreciate the time and perspective.

SANNER: Thank you.

JIMENEZ: We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:57:04]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JUDGE RICHARD MRAZIK, THIRD DISTRICT COURT, UTAH: We, the jury, unanimously find that the defendant, Kouri Richins, is guilty of aggravated murder.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Kouri Richins, the woman who wrote a children's book about grief after her husband's death, has been found guilty of fatally poisoning him with fentanyl in 2022, and it took the jury just three hours to reach that verdict.

CNN Anchor and Chief Legal Analyst, Laura Coates is with us now to talk about this case, something that captured attention across the country.

LAURA COATES, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: It really did. I mean, a three-week trial. The defense did not put on a case. It was all the prosecution's case. Less than three hours really to actually convict her, and these were very serious charges.

Not only was she accused of and convicted of a fatal fentanyl poisoning, five times the lethal limit of fentanyl, but also of having attempted to poison him before with a sandwich on Valentine's Day several weeks before, and the motive, cold, hard cash. She was deeply in debt, $4 million, unable to actually provide for her real estate flipping business, and also an extramarital affair where she wanted to be with her lover at the end of their marriage, and a prenuptial agreement that said you only collect money upon death, not divorce.

KEILAR: You said the defense didn't put on a case. Do you think that was a mistake?

COATES: There were some hurdles for this defense, including a very important letter called the 'Walk the Dog' letter that was read through a detective at the very end of trial, and what it said was an in-jail written letter to her mother as a coded message to tell her brother what to say to her lawyers to concoct a story to get her out of jail.

This was a really important thing that the defense just could not overcome. The only other avenue would be to call her to the actual stand, but they have already, time and time again, proven her to be a liar, a forger, someone committing insurance fraud, and I think they, in the end, felt that they were going to take their chance on the government's star witness, somebody who was in drug treatment, who is testifying under immunity for the government, that they wouldn't believe that she had an incentive of anything other than to please the prosecution.

KEILAR: And moving forward, she obviously will have a chance to appeal.

COATES: Yes.

KEILAR: You would expect that.

COATES: Yeah. She will appeal. There were some moments, they called for a mistrial in this case already, one being the star witness that thought they didn't have enough information on her to cross-examine, another one being the way in which the prosecution referred to her as a black widow and beyond. But there is a really important moment here in all of this, and that is the sentencing date. Can you believe this, Brianna? It will be on May 13th. That is her deceased husband's, what would have been, his 44th birthday.

KEILAR: That is really sad.

COATES: Yes.

KEILAR: Very sad. Laura, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. And be sure to join Laura each night at 11 p.m. Eastern for "Laura Coates Live" only on CNN. And a new hour of "CNN News Central" starts right now.

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