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Stocks Rise on Iran Agreement News; Democratic Warning Signs; Trump Blocks Access to Anthropic; Max Alexander is Interviewed about His Fashion Designs. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired June 15, 2026 - 09:30   ET

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

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[09:30:36]

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: The bells are ringing, the opening bell on Wall Street, as investors around the world react to the news that the U.S. and Iran have reached an agreement to try and end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, with formal signing set for Friday. Oil futures hit a three-month low on the news with WTI, the U.S. benchmark, falling to just above $80 a barrel.

CNN's Matt Egan joining me right now.

I know we don't get sort of the updated numbers until about 30 seconds from --

MATT EGAN, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: There it is.

SIDNER: There we are. Look at -- look at us. It's updated right now. It's magic of television. But you see the Dow, big numbers there and a slight uptick across the board.

EGAN: Yes, well, look, Sara --

SIDNER: Not a surprise, right?

EGAN: No, I'm not surprised. Investors are celebrating this diplomatic breakthrough. I mean the war with Iran has been hovering over the world economy as this ominous dark cloud for months. And so, if this situation could get defused, that, of course, will take a lot of the risk out.

So, yes, seeing U.S. stocks open solidly higher, the Dow up 1.3 percent, flirting with all-time highs, actually, on a closing basis. The Dow could close at an all-time high today. The Nasdaq and the S&P up even more on a percentage basis. And airline stocks are really leading the way higher, seeing JetBlue, Southwest, American, United, all of them moving up as investors anticipate lower jet fuel costs.

And the market is happy about the fact that, yes, oil futures do continue to go down, right? About a five percent drop for Brent to $83 a barrel. That's not cheap, but it is manageable, and it is miles away from $114 a barrel, just about five weeks ago or so. But look, while it does feel like things are moving in the right

direction here, I think we should just caution everyone that it doesn't mean that this is going to be a straight line back to normal, right? There's probably going to be bumps along the way given the complexity here and just given the scale of the problem, right? I mean we're talking about a situation where the Strait of Hormuz, you have to make sure that the mines get cleared out. All the vessels that were trapped in the gulf, they've got to get cleared out of there. Then you have to also get new, empty vessels to go back in.

SIDNER: Right, in.

EGAN: But to do that, you have to convince the ship operators and the insurers to go along. Plus, Saudi Arabia and other OPEC nations, they really slashed oil production during this crisis because they ran out of room to put all the oil because they couldn't get it out of the gulf.

SIDNER: Right.

EGAN: So, they've got to get enough confidence where they're convinced to restart production. And that's not going to be easy.

And look, it's early, right? I mean we haven't even seen the text of the agreement, let alone the formal signing of it yet. And the ceasefire, it's been fragile. So, we've got to pay close attention to see what happens here.

But look, for now, gas prices continue to come down, right? So, the new national average, $4.06 a gallon. Not cheap. Obviously, a lot more expensive than before the war when it was below $3 a gallon.

However, look, we are still talking about 25 days in a row of falling gas prices. And this is the lowest level for gas prices in two months. GasBuddy's Patrick de Haan, he said that maybe by the Fourth of July we could see gas continue to come down to $3.75 a gallon. But he also cautioned, it could take months or even longer to repair all of the oil inventories that have been tapped to try to ride out the storm.

So, look, Sara, bottom line, it took months to get into this mess. It's not going to get cleaned up overnight.

SIDNER: Yes, and that is the point that needs to be made. And $4 a gallon is still high for most people who are sort of used to those $3 and change a gallon across the country.

EGAN: Yes.

SIDNER: We'll see how this happens. But it is good news for consumers and for just about everyone trying to figure all of this out.

EGAN: Absolutely.

SIDNER: All right. Thank you, Matt.

EGAN: Thank you, Sara. SIDNER: Kate.

BOLDUAN: Ahead for us, A.I. giant Anthropic is sending senior staff to the White House right now to try and address the, quote/unquote, national security issues the White House sees with its latest model. But some cybersecurity experts say the White House move that got them all here is hurting cyber defenders more than attackers.

And from crayons to couture, the youngest fashion designer to ever show a collection at Paris Fashion Week is right there. And Max Alexander is joining us in studio.

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[09:39:31]

BERMAN: All right, a brand-new poll from NBC News shows the president's approval rating is low, and it shows Democrats have an edge in the race for Congress. But then why are we saying this same poll shows warning signs for Democrats heading into the midterms?

CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten is here.

So, what are the warning signs here?

HARRY ENTEN, CNN CHIEF DATA ANALYST: Yes, I think the warning sign is this, Democrats have an edge, but compared to what we see historically, it's really not that big of a lead.

[09:40:01]

I mean just take a look here. OK, this is Congress national June polls, Dem leads. And this is NBC News. Midterm years with a GOP press. Look at this, they're up by five points. But that's half the lead they had back in 2018 when it was ten points and less than half the lead they had back in 2006 with 11 points when Democrats took back the House in both of those years, and now the Democratic lead is on a single hand, one, two, three, four, five points. And it's this type of lead where you say, you know what, Democrats are ahead, but don't count your chickens just quite yet.

BERMAN: And, Harry, we've been talking about this. As time goes on, you and I have kept on looking at these numbers, saying it just doesn't look like the numbers we've seen when there have been waves for Democrats in the past.

ENTEN: What are the trends in the other polls?

ENTEN: Yes. OK. So, this is not just one poll in which we are seeing this. There is this group of pollsters that are out there that are just not showing the wave you might expect, given where the president's approval rating is. OK, what are we talking about? We're talking about NBC, Marquette University Law School and Ipsos. Look at where they were January and February, and look at where they are May and June. NBC, down a point. MU Law, down three points. Ipsos, basically staying the same. So, the Democrats hold these leads. But again, you have this group of

pollsters that are out there where this lead, simply put, is not matching what you might expect if you were expecting a Democratic wave.

BERMAN: And that's sort of in a vacuum. What about in a year where Republicans have already made significant gains in terms of redistricting?

ENTEN: Exactly right. So, you might say, hey, the president's approval is way down low. You expect Democrats to be way up high, especially given the record lows because of the Iran War not happening. And then you put in redistricting. Democrats and the national House vote, look at this, needed to control redistricting. We really think the Democrats need between a three and four point advantage in the national vote. You average those polls together. We just saw in the last screen, Ipsos, MU Law and NBC, it's right on the border there. It's right on the border. It is no guarantee. It is far from a guarantee at this point if you believe these pollsters.

BERMAN: Very tight. Now, what are the prediction markets saying about Democrats hopes to retake both chambers (INAUDIBLE).

ENTEN: Yes, OK. So, then you take a look. OK, look at the Kalshi prediction market. Chance to win the midterms. Look, Democrats clearly have the advantage at 78 percent chance, but that's far from 100 percent, right? That's a one in five -- more than a one in five chance Republicans hold on.

You look at the Senate. The GOP still has the edge there. More likely than not that the GOP holds on to the Senate according to the Kalshi prediction markets. So, basically, I'm putting out this warning sign. These are the warning signs, right? Yes, Democrats probably take back the House, but it's far from a guarantee. We are not going to get caught, like in past years. We ignore those polls that had those warning signs.

BERMAN: Yes, stand by. We need more information on this.

ENTEN: Yes.

BERMAN: But it's a trend worth watching.

Harry Enten, thank you very much.

ENTEN: Thank you, my friend.

BERMAN: We do have a lot of news this morning. We'll be right back.

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[09:47:15]

BOLDUAN: So, this morning we're learning from "Axios" that the senior staff from the top A.I. company, Anthropic, they're heading to Washington right now. The goal, to try and clean up a new feud with the White House. The visit comes after Anthropic suspended access to its Mythos five and Fable five models, the company's most advanced A.I. systems yet. That move prompted when the U.S. government instituted a ban Friday on foreign governments, companies and individuals from using those models. Anthropic says the government cited national security issues. There's a lot of big questions about what happens now.

CNN's Hadas Gold joins us now. She's got more details on it.

What are you picking up on this?

HADA GOLD, CNN A.I. CORRESPONDENT: Yes, so this all started with Mythos, which is that super powerful new A.I. model from Anthropic that is like having a million hackers when it comes to cybersecurity or defenders working for you. It was so powerful that it spooked Wall Street and the government and Anthropic didn't actually release it publicly, only releasing it to a small set of individuals and groups that they could test it out.

Then last week Anthropic released what they called Fable, which they said is Mythos, but with special guardrails so that it could be released for anybody to be able to use. But within just a couple of days, after Fable was released, on Friday afternoon, Anthropic said they got a sudden call from the government saying, you need to pull Fable and Mythos down or fix this jailbreak that they said somebody had found.

We now understand that that jailbreak was actually found by Amazon, who was so worried about this jailbreak, which is a way to get around an A.I. model's guardrails, that Amazon's CEO called the U.S. government warning them about this jailbreak. Because what there is a fear of is that if this type of tool gets in the hands of the wrong person, like I said, it's like having the most powerful cybersecurity tool in somebody's hands. They could use it to hack, you know, very important systems, the electrical grid, the banks or something like that.

And so, there is a bit of a narrative fight going on right now between the government and Anthropic over how serious this jailbreak is and how Anthropic responded to the government's request to fix this jailbreak or pull it down. But essentially what we know is what happened in the span of just a few hours, the government issued what's known as an export control on Anthropic. And what it means is that no foreign national, including Anthropic employees, can touch Fable or Mythos. And as a result, Anthropic pulled this entire model for everybody. Nobody can now touch Fable or Mythos. And this is a really big deal.

Now, Anthropic says that they work with the government before releasing Mythos. They got the approval to release this new Fable. They said that the jailbreak is relatively simple and that they say it can be achieved with other models, and that they did not demonstrate a flaw in Fable's systems. They say, in part, "we disagree that the finding of a narrow potential jailbreak should be cause for recalling a commercial model deployed to hundreds of millions of people.

[09:50:02]

If this standard was applied across the industry, we believe it would essentially halt all new model deployments for all frontier model providers."

What were essentially seeing here from the government is they are trying to figure out how to regulate what is a very powerful tool in real time. The government, for their part, says they had to do this. David Sacks, who's the former A.I. czar, he said, "the admins hope now is that Anthropic remediates the safety issue, the export control is lifted and Fable goes back into general release. The admin wants all of this to happen as soon as possible. It is frankly bewildered that Anthropic hasn't wanted to comply with safety requests that it previously said were its highest priorities.

And my sources also confirmed that Anthropic is working still closely with the government, trying to figure out a fix for this jailbreak and really trying to come to an understanding with the government so that they can bring Fable and Mythos back online.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: Yes, there's -- I think what you're saying, the kind of battle of the narratives is a real big part of all of this right now for sure. It's -- on a very serious issue.

It's great to see you, Hadas. Thank you so much.

Sara.

SIDNER: All right, thank you so much, Kate.

The Guinness Book of World Records calls him the world's youngest fashion runway designer. At just ten years old, Max Alexander is already making his mark on the fashion world. Look at him. He's so fabulous. His colorful, couture-inspired designs recently earned him a debut at Paris Fashion Week. Amazing. Max even made his mom a custom dress for the streaming (ph) awards.

Take a listen.

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MAX ALEXANDER: Can I please have two yards of this?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What are you making?

ALEXANDER: I'm making something for my mommy.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, nice.

ALEXANDER: OK, first we have to do fluff test. We need eight layers. There.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, what's draping?

ALEXANDER: It's like when you make a dress on a mannequin, but you're not actually sewing it. It's like where you first think of it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: Joining me now, the man, the myth, the legend, oh, wait, the child, the myth, the legend, Max Alexander and his mom, Sherri.

Thank you both for being here.

OK, so we've been watching your videos. And I got to tell you, the first time I saw you, I saw you on Instagram, and I thought it was A.I. at first because you were so good at this. How did you know you even liked to sew?

MAX ALEXANDER, TEN-YEAR-OLD FASHION DESIGNER: So, basically, one day I kind of just said it. So, when I was four years old we were eating dinner and I said, I am a fashion designer and I want a mannequin. My mom thought it was a joke. But she decided to make me a mannequin. I named it Samantha. And I made like a skirt. And you were like, what?

SIDNER: You -- so he says to you, at four years old, I'm a fashion designer. And you say back, what?

SHERRI MADISON, MAX ALEXANDER'S MOM: What? You know, there was no fashion happening in our house at that time. So, it was a pretty big surprise. So, I just made him like a little mannequin to work with, and we thought it would probably last a week, you know, he was four. And then he designed every day since for six years.

SIDNER: Four.

It is truly remarkable because you make some gorgeous gowns. You're right up there with the Valentinos of the world. You went to Paris Fashion Week, which for the sports fans in here, of which we have many, that's like the Super Bowl of fashion designer.

Give us a sense of what that was like for you, because it's stressful, isn't it?

ALEXANDER: Yes. So, Paris Fashion Week, it was stressful, but it was fun. And I'm very grateful that I got to be at Paris.

But, yes, it was pretty fun getting everything ready. It was hard getting everything ready. It was confusing. But it was like every fashion -- every fashion show was confusing and hard and stressful.

SIDNER: Yes. You've got to have a lot of -- yes, a lot of designs. You have to get them on the models. You have to make sure they look just right.

ALEXANDER: Yes.

SIDNER: You, though, have a message, because part of what you do, even though you've started so early, you want to teach adults a little something about what we do with fashion and how we just throw away old clothes or give away old things. What's your message to us adults about the way we treat fashion?

ALEXANDER: So, you should really stop by -- consuming fast fashion. And if you don't know what fast fashion is, it's basically fashion that you could -- you only really wear for like four or five days and then you throw it away. But you should really be like using really good clothes that last like a long time, instead of clothes that go into our landfills and oceans and pollute the world.

SIDNER: And have you seen the enormous amounts of fashion that does end up into the oceans? You're sort of looking at that as well, aren't you?

ALEXANDER: I have watched a documentary about it and it's like really bad in Ghana today -- not today --

[09:55:07]

SIDNER: It's early.

ALEXANDER: This summer we are going to the Atacama Desert too, because that's also a place where they dump fast fashion. But yes, that's kind of like you should really stop using clothes that last a tiny bit. And some brands that do that are like H&M, ZARA, SHEIN, et cetera.

SIDNER: You're going up against some big names. But you also do things like, oh, you can remake some of these things. So, maybe if it tears or if it's not made that well, I've seen you redo things. I was going to bring a few outfits in for you to fix them. I do tend to keep my clothes a really long time. So, what is advice to someone who has something old but wants something different?

ALEXANDER: Well, I mean, you could do whatever you want with it. You can make a blanket out of it.

SIDNER: Yes.

ALEXANDER: You can make a scarf. You could just sew it up and make the same thing. You can make a lot of things out of one piece of clothing.

SIDNER: I love it.

Thank you so much for coming in and for your fabulous designs. We wish you all the best, Max. And thank you, Sherri, for believing in him at four years old. He knew what he was talking about. I still don't know what I'm talking about. I'm amazed. Thank you both. I do appreciate it.

All right, Max and Sherri, thank you both.

And this has been CNN NEWS CENTRAL. John was going to do a fashion show for us, but he decided not to. He didn't bring the right clothes.

"THE SITUATION ROOM" is up next.

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