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Trump - My Favorite Thing Is To Take The Oil In Iran; Trump - Iran Agreed To Most Of 15-Point List Of Demands; Border Czar - ICE Agents Could Stay At Airports After TSA Workers Paid; Epstein Survivors Sue DOJ & Google Over Release Of Private Info; FCC Chair Characterizes Media Shakeups As Trump - Winning; NASA's Artemis II Crew To Make History Around The Moon. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired March 30, 2026 - 07:30   ET

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

[07:30:00]

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KATE BOLDUAN, ANCHOR: So President Trump wants to take Iran's oil. He said so during a new interview with The Financial Times saying that he's considering seizing Kharg Island, Iran's major oil hub. That is the latest presidential declaration, if you will, that's causing oil prices to jump once again. The President told reporters overnight that Iran has mostly accepted the 15-point plan from the United States to end this war, yet Iran says that is not true and calls the plan excessive, unrealistic, and unreasonable.

Tehran, in turn is now threatening "From them is to rain fire on American troops if the U.S. launches a ground invasion." CNN's Matthew Chance is live in Doha for us this morning. And, Matthew, you hear from the President seeming to suggest that talks are happening and working, and Iran seems to say it's not happening at all.

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CHIEF GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. Well, I mean, look, a lot of things in this conflict so far. There's been a big gap between what's been said and what's actually happening. And this may be another example of that. On the other hand, publicly, you can see that President Trump is saying that Iran has met lots of the 15-points, the plan that that the U.S. has submitted to try and bring an end to the conflict.

But publicly, Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesperson, basically dismissing that saying that's unrealistic, unreasonable, excessive. These are demands, things like Iran, abandoning its nuclear activities, stopping support for its proxies like Hezbollah and Lebanon and elsewhere, and kind of things like that that have that have really been on the U.S. wish list when it comes to what it wants Tehran to do for many, many years, and it's always been rejected. And it seems to have been rejected this time as well at least at least publicly.

Iran has come up with its own list of five things, that it thinks needs to done to bring an end to the conflict, and that's equally unrealistic. Talking about things like the United States, getting rid of its bases across The Middle East, making sure that Iran has full control over that strategic Strait of Hormuz into the future, a guarantee of no attacks, and also war reparations that it wants paid from the United States, because of all the damage that's been done inside the Islamic Republic.

Again, absolutely unrealistic. And so given those two extremes, Kate, it doesn't seem that at least publicly there is any sign of a compromise emerging. What there is a sign of is lots of escalation because over the course of the past couple of days, in particular, we've seen Iran fired drones and missiles at all sorts of targets across this Persian Gulf region, really escalating the tension.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely. Matthew, it's great that you're there. Thank you so much for your reporting. Jump.

JOHN BERMAN, ANCHOR/CORRESPONDENT: All right. With us now is Congressman Dan Goldman, a Democrat from New York who's on the Homeland Security Committee. Congressman, in addition to what Kate was just talking about with Matthew, the President just issued a new post on social media about all this, and I want to read it to you. He says the United States of America is in serious discussions with a new and more reasonable regime to end our military operations in Iran. Great progress has been made, but if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Strait of Hormuz is not immediately open for business, we will conclude our lovely stay in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their electric generating plants, oil wells, and Kharg Island.

[07:35:00]

And he goes on with a little more there. So he says in serious negotiations, a deal will probably be made, but a spokesman for Iran's foreign ministry said there are no direct negotiations and is calling the U.S. demands largely excessive, unrealistic, and unreasonable. So how do you explain that discrepancy?

REP. DAN GOLDMAN, (D) NEW YORK: Well, I think it's been pretty well established now that Donald Trump has been lying about his conversations with Iran indirectly or directly. And this is just yet another threat that he is trying to use in order to create an off ramp for himself. He has -- his bluff has been called by the regime in Iran, which by no means is a better or nicer regime. If anything, it may be even more hardline. And he's desperately trying to figure out some kind of an off ramp here, because he had no plan to begin with. He has no strategy now.

There is no objective. And this is just chaos right now that's causing a tremendous death and destruction and not only to human beings, civilians, American troops, et cetera, but also devastation to our economy as oil prices rise and the stock market goes down and it's complete chaos. I don't think Donald Trump has any idea what he's doing and I think we'll get some other social media post later today that will say something totally different.

BERMAN: One of the things he said overnight to The Financial Times was that if the United States does seize Kharg Island, which is so important to Iran's oil refining and producing capacity, that the United States would have to stay there for some time. How would you feel about a U.S. troop presence perhaps in Iran for some time to come?

GOLDMAN: No. It's really just out of the question. It should be. And this is separate and apart, of course, from the Republican stance that the reason why Donald Trump did not need to come to Congress prior to the initial operation is, because it was simply an air attack. It was not with troops on the ground.

Well, I haven't heard anything about Donald Trump coming back to Congress to get authorization for troops on the ground, which is unquestionably war. This is war to begin with, but now we've crossed over the line. The Republicans have set. Kharg Island creates about 90 percent of Iran's oil production. It would escalate this dramatically if Donald Trump were to try to do that.

And part of the problem, of course, is that the ultimate sacrifice will be to the Iranian civilians. And this is part of the reason why this plan, to the extent there was any, this operation is reckless, is that ultimately the Iranian civilians are going to really pay the price, not the regime of Iran. And because of the lack of preparation and the lack of strategic thinking or anticipation of what the response and retaliation would be were Donald Trump is just listlessly going back and forth as to what he can possibly do to get out of this.

BERMAN: We have reporters at airports around the country. A reporter in Atlanta this morning says the lines are actually a lot shorter than they have been there at the TSA checkpoints. That may be because the President has signed an executive order releasing some funds for them to get paid. Today, there are still ICE agents operating there, and Tom Homan, the President's Border Czar told CNN that ICE might be at airports for a while. Listen.

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TOM HOMAN, BORDER CZAR: We'll see. It depends how many TSA agents come back to work, how many TSA agents have actually quit and have no plan coming back to work. I'm working very closely with TSA Administrator and the ICE Director to decide what airport needs what.

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BERMAN: How would you feel about extending ICE's stay at U.S. airports?

GOLDMAN: The same way I feel about sending ICE to the airports in the first place. I mean, these are people who are unqualified, untrained, unvetted to do the job they're supposed to do. Now they're being sent to airports where they have no idea what they're supposed to be doing, and we're seeing a chaos that they are bringing in.

Now Donald Trump finally did what he should have done 44 or 45 days ago, which is just use the $100 billion that the Department of Homeland Security got in their reconciliation bill, the Big Ugly Bill, to pay the TSA agents, and we would not be in this problem. He's more than happy to use that money to pay for ICE to give them $50,000 signing bonuses to create havoc and wreak fear and terror all around our country. But he caused these lines because he refused to use any of that money for the TSA.

[07:40:00]

He's now doing that. That's obviously something that should have been done a month and a half ago. But from our perspective, we are not going to give another dollar to ICE or CBP until there are serious reforms. And if Donald Trump has now understood that he needs to pay TSA out of ICE's budget, great. That's just reduces ICE's budget.

BERMAN: Congressman, Dan Goldman from New York. Appreciate your time this morning. Thank you. Sarah?

SARA SIDNER, ANCHOR, SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: All right. Conservatives giving us a very early look at their choice for president after President Trump. At CPAC this weekend, a straw poll of attendees found the most wanted Vice President, JD Vance, but he's seeing a slight drop in support, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio is seeing his numbers rise. Also a big topic, the war in Iran.

CNN's Donie O'Sullivan spoke to the MAGA Faithful about where they stand as the war enters its second month now.

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DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: When it comes to Iran, how do you feel about that?

ALEX STONE, CPAC ATTENDEE: I'm not happy. I'm not happy at all. I mean, President Trump ran on no new wars.

O'SULLIVAN: And what do think of the war with Iran at the moment?

BRENDA PASSLALES, CPAC ATTENDEE: Unfortunately, I think it's necessary.

O'SULLIVAN: You do?

PASSLALES: Yes. And he's the only President that had the backbone to take it on.

O'SULLIVAN: Here at CPAC in Dallas, opinion is divided about the war in Iran.

COLE KORNELL, CPAC ATTENDEE: Right now, I'm optimistic about it. Am I a Republican that wants a forever war? Do I want a bunch of boots on the ground? Do I want Iraq 2.0? No, I don't. But through what, he's accomplished in the past, what he did with Maduro, I'm very confident that this will be a success as well. And as long as it's a temporary thing. I mean, if this is something that's still going on months from now, then the Republicans can kiss the midterms goodbye.

O'SULLIVAN: Are you concerned that it's going to drag out into long- term war? PASSLALES: Of course. Of course. And but I don't think that's going to happen. I don't think Trump will allow that to happen. He's a President of peace. He was in for four years, and there was no war.

STONE: I feel like we've been co-opted into a war that shouldn't be ours. It should be Israel's. Obviously, I don't think that Iran should have a nuclear weapon. But for 20 plus years, they've been saying Iran is on the verge of a nuclear weapon. OK. Where's the nuclear weapon?

O'SULLIVAN: What do you say to people who say, well, this is Israel's war. It shouldn't be America's war?

DOC COLLINS, CPAC ATTENDEE: That's not so. Israel is God's people and knows that, bless Israel will be blessed, knows that curse Israel, they better watch out.

O'SULLIVAN: Do you believe that Israel forced the U.S. into this war?

PASSLALES: Absolutely not. Donald Trump does what Donald Trump wants to do, period. End of story.

KORNELL: I don't think Trump is really controlled by anybody, as much as everyone would like to control him, but I do question some of the things when it comes to, are we just going to bend over everything for Israel?

O'SULLIVAN: Do you feel disappointed in the President?

STONE: Sure.

O'SULLIVAN: Do you still support him?

STONE: I want him to succeed. I think it's to be determined on, if I can remain to support him.

O'SULLIVAN: Are you concerned that this war drags on?

STONE: Absolutely. Absolutely. I -- you know, we hear the phrase America First. Let's put America First. And I'm concerned that this isn't putting America First.

O'SULLIVAN: America First sentiments are strong here. And while not all Iranian Americans agree with the war. Are you from Iran?

REZA GHAFFARIAN, CPAC ATTENDEE: Yes. I've been here for 50 years.

O'SULLIVAN: Many of those who came to this year, CPAC.

GHAFFARIAN: Hello.

O'SULLIVAN: Are you also Iranian?

SINA KHODAELFAR, CPAC ATTENDEE: I miss my country. I'm 15 years here.

O'SULLIVAN: Have come here to plead with the president to stay in the fight. There's pressure here in the United States on Trump, on the administration to end the war quick.

MATTIN SAMIMIAT, CPAC ATTENDEE: I get the concern because people have trauma from Iraq and Afghanistan wars. But think about a future alliance between the best friendly Iran and United States. How much your prices of oil will go down?

REZA FAMOOD, CPAC ATTENDEE: Iran is not Iraq and it's not Afghanistan. We don't want money. We don't want anything. We want our country back.

O'SULLIVAN: If Trump is watching this, what is your message to the President?

FAMOOD: Mr. President, thank you. And we know you're playing right. People of Iran, thank you for your help and support.

O'SULLIVAN: Donie O'Sullivan, CNN, Dallas.

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BOLDUAN: Doni, thank you so much for that. Let's turn to this. A Tennessee woman spent more than five months in jail for a crime she did not commit. One that happened 1,000 miles from her home, and police say AI is to blame. 50-year-old Angela Lipps says that she has never even been to North Dakota, but police there issued an arrest warrant for her for bank fraud.

She says U.S. marshals, they arrested her at gunpoint at her home. She was then eventually extradited to North Dakota. Lipps wrote this on her GoFundMe page about it all.

[07:45:00]

She wrote, it was the first time I had ever been on an airplane. I was terrified, exhausted, and humiliated. Now police in Fargo, they now say a false positive from an AI facial recognition tool used by a neighboring police department is what's behind this mess that it flagged Lipps' photo as a potential suspect.

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DAVID ZIBOLSKI, FARGO POLICE CHIEF: But they forwarded that information to our, detectives who then assumed wrongly that they had also sent in the surveillance photos with that photo ID.

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BOLDUAN: Now Angela Lipps was finally released months after when bank records proved that she was in Tennessee at the time of the crime. The police chief says that they've already made changes to prevent this from happening again, though he did not directly apologize for what had already happened. The software company Clearview AI has not returned CNN's request for comment. And as far as we can tell, they're still investigating this original crime.

Ahead for us, 12 tons of KitKat bars stolen. Where is all of that chocolate now? We'll see. And your office chair just got its own sport. Competitive office chair racing is taking off in Japan.

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[07:50:00]

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SIDNER: This morning, a new lawsuit from a group of Jeffrey Epstein survivors over what they say is the release of private information. It targets not just the justice department, but also Google. The complaint alleges that the Epstein documents released by the DOJ, "Outed approximately 100 survivors publishing their private information and identifying them to the world."

It also claims that even after the government acknowledged the disclosure and files were removed, "Online entities like Google continuously republish it, refusing victims' pleas to take it down." CNN has reached out to the justice department and Google for comment. We have received none yet.

I'm joined now by James Marsh. He's an attorney who represents several survivors of Epstein's abuse. He says that to his knowledge, none of his clients are involved in this particular suit.

Although I do want to ask you, I think some of your client's information was revealed. Their public information was revealed, correct?

JAMES MARSH, ATTORNEY: REPRESENTS VICTIMS OF JEFFREY EPSTEIN: That's correct. One of my clients, Maria Farmer has been very forward and out there, identified for a long time as one of the leading survivors of the original whistleblowers in 1996. So her name's been out there. It's in the files. But, again, a lot of the challenges with these files is there's a lot of information in there without a lot of context.

SIDNER: What has happened, because this information has leaked? Have some of these victims simply been revictimized because there were things like addresses, correct?

MARSH: Absolutely. No. This is a real insult to the victims that were identified. These people have already been through a tremendous amount of trauma with Jeffrey Epstein, and this could have happened 10, 20, 30 years ago. Now they're exposed to an ongoing round of trauma again, and it's really indicative of what's happened with this whole affair with the records. Things were rushed. Things were released. Things were not double checked.

I don't even know that they had a list of victims' names to be able to audit the files. So this is sort of the perfect storm of what's happened here in the last six months with these records.

SIDNER: The Department of Justice says, look this was just a fraction of documents that had errors. But to you, just hearing sort of mitigating, oh, it was just a fraction. To you, what is the damage that has really been done here? MARSH: It's like everything else on the Internet. Once these names are released, they can never be taken back. The lawsuit itself is interesting. It's challenging Google and their refusal to take information down. But we have Section 230 in this country, which protects these platforms from information that's provided by someone else. Clearly, this information was provided by the government. Google didn't create this. So I find that part of the lawsuit's going to be challenging. And I think the lawsuit against the Department of Justice, which has a tremendous amount of merit is also going to be challenging.

The standard for a Privacy Act violation is very high. It's intentional. It's beyond gross negligence. It has to be on purpose. And I think as wrong as the government has been in so many ways, I doubt that they were really purposely releasing the names of these victims. It's just part and parcel of the poor way that this has been handled.

I do want to ask you. There are so many documents that have not been released. What are the documents that you think are the most interesting and the most needed for the public to get a view of and for your clients to be able to see?

MARSH: I think what's really been important for Maria and what we've been emphasizing is the documents involving Jeffrey Epstein from the 1990s. When she was the whistleblower in the middle of the 1990s, Jeffrey Epstein was involved in several major pieces of litigation involving the justice department, to our financial, also a lease from the Department of State, if you can believe that. We haven't seen those records.

We've been looking for them for the first day. They're certainly covered by the Epstein Records Act, but we haven't seen those. So I think that will help give a lot of context to what the government knew about Jeffrey Epstein in the '90s before he started committing the majority of his crimes that we're reading about today. We're waiting to see those.

SIDNER: I'm curious why you and perhaps why your clients think that they haven't seen those documents yet?

MARSH: There's been so much emphasis placed on the -- what's obvious to me from the files is a whole lot of work was done after Jeffrey Epstein died, right? A lot of these records are from the Ghislaine Maxwell prosecution after he was dead. All the emails, that's one huge tranche, and you don't really see a lot of information prior to those emails, which started in 2000s. So we really want to see where the root of Jeffrey Epstein took place, what the government knew. We know that he was defendant in these lawsuits, so we know that he's in there.

[07:55:00]

This is not speculation. And we think for people to have a really good perspective of how he became the person he was and caused the damage that he did, we need to know the roots of Jeffrey Epstein, and that goes back to the 1990s. We've seen none of those records, so that's something we're waiting for.

SIDNER: And I'm -- and I know some of the victims that we've talked to have said and how he wasn't stopped. Like, why wasn't he stopped along the way?

MARSH: Absolutely. My client made a child pornography report. These were felonies. They could have seized his digital devices and put him into prison in the '90s. There's thousands of defendants right now sitting in federal prison for far less. They didn't get him in the '90s on child pornography. We now call it CSAM. They didn't get him in the 2000s on this issue. They didn't even get him prior to his death. It was only after his death that they did a child pornography forensic review of his hard drives and digital materials, and they turned up tens of thousands of images. Why wasn't that done in 1990 when Maria made a report? Why wasn't that done in 2000s when they seized control of him? Why wasn't it done prior to 2019 when he was arrested? These are all questions that we have.

It's going to be really important to our clients, because without this kind of accountability for the early days, we can't really begin to put everything that happened afterwards in context.

SIDNER: And it's important for the public at large to know this as well. James Marsh, I do appreciate you coming here this morning.

MARSH: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

SIDNER: Appreciate it. John?

BERMAN: All right. This morning, FCC Chair Brendan Carr drawing backlash from Marks on stage at CPAC, the overtly partisan conservative organization. Critics say he's overstepping the line as FCC Chair and erasing the agency's independence. CNN Chief Media Analyst Brian Stelter is with us. Tell me, Brian, this was a single entendre. I mean, I don't think it's not objective to say this was a partisan speech the FCC chair gave us CPAC.

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: Yes. Absolutely. Definitely. This is the most explicit example yet about the head of the FCC is really doing President Trump's bidding. He says recent shakeups in the news business are examples of Trump winning, and his rhetoric is a sharp departure from past FCC Chairs who were proud of the agency's independence. It shows how the Trump administration is really taking the bully pulpit approach to try to bully the press into submission, although it's not always working.

Now here is part of the comment the FCC Chair, Brendan Carr made. Here's his comment about how Trump is winning.

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BRENDAN CARR, FCC CHAIR: President Trump took on the fake news media, and President Trump is winning. Look at the results so far. PBS defunded. NPR defunded. Joy Reid gone from MSNBC. Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd gone. Jim Acosta gone. John Dickerson gone. Colbert is leaving. CBS is under new ownership, and soon enough CNN is going to have new ownership as well.

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STELTER: So there in the room at CPAC, now you saw Carr was receiving applause from the right wing activist at CPAC, but he was really showing that he views himself as Trump's personal advocate. And to be clear, the FCC had nothing to do with any TV host changes. He was naming some examples of changes at CNN and other cable channels that are, again, totally outside of the FCC's purview.

But the FCC did have a big hand in Paramount's ownership change involving CBS last year. So it's telling that Carr also brought up the fact that Paramount is seeking to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN's parent company. And his comment about CBS, he kind of implied that Trump or Carr have control of CBS or CBS News coverage now. And I'll tell you, some of the people who were bothered by Carr's comment over the weekend were journalists at CBS who said in effect, hey, you don't own us. You're not in control of CBS. We are working independently.

So Carr's comments, again, one of those examples that could have a chilling effect, but he has a lot more power with words than he does with actions. He has very limited power to actually follow-up on his desires. John?

BERMAN: No. But a lot of people certainly listening to the words he is choosing on that stage. Brian Stelter, great to see you this morning. Thank you very much. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Right. We've got a live look we will show you of Kennedy Space Center right here at 7:58 a.m., where Wednesday, the first human moon mission is more than in more than half a century is on track to launch. NASA's Artemis II is set to take off for a 10-day mission around the moon, and the four person crew will be making history, including the first woman to venture to the moon and the first black person to travel to deep space.

Candy giant Nestle says that 12 tons of KitKat bars were stolen from a truck leaving its production site in Italy. That's more than 400,000 candy bars. The company says that the vehicle and its load are still nowhere to be found. Nestle found -- Nestle says all of its products can be traced using a unique batch code assigned to individual bars. So if a match from a stolen shipment is found, the company will be alerted. So beware of your KitKat bar. The good news is the brand says that there are no concerns for consumer safety. The supply is not.