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Trump Takes Questions from Reporters in the Oval Office; Trump Says He Trusts China and Russia Aren't Arming Iran; U.S. and Iran Trade Strikes in 13th Straight Night of Attacks; Paramount Agrees to Delay Warner Bros Discovery Takeover for Months. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired July 24, 2026 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No, we want them to, it's a two-way street and we think it's very important for the future of the Middle East. The Abraham Accords have been incredibly successful for the countries, as you know, for the countries in them. And I think it's very important.

So, you know, at some point they'll join, they'll join and they'll do their civil, that's true, I call it civil nuclear, but that's what it is, no enrichment, it's civil nuclear.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Quick question about Iran. You're talking about blowing up civilian power plants and bridges. Much of the civilized world would consider that a war crime.

Do you?

TRUMP: I won't respond to that question. Who are you with? The New York Times.

I figured so, failing New York Times.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I just came back from Venezuela and people there are very happy with you, with Secretary Marco Rubio, with Secretary Wright. I have --

TRUMP: I've have good poll numbers in Venezuela.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know some news plans for there and they're amazing. I want to give you, thank you. I want to ask you one question because some people there, they are asking me that. When will there be elections?

Do you have a date in mind? Senator Bernie Moreno said that July 24, 2027, could be a good day in honor of Simon Bolivar. And my second question is the football player who scored Spain's in the final at World Cup, Ferran Torres, celebrate the victory wearing a Make Spain Great Again cap.

The communists are attacking him because they say that it's a friend of you. And also, they are attacking Argentinian players because of Milei. What do you think about that? TRUMP: Well, he's a great player and he was wearing essentially a Make America Great Again cap, you know, so it was a nice tribute. And I think he meant that very nicely. We appreciate it.

We have. We've made America great. We have the greatest country in the world now.

I will say this. We were a year and a half ago, two years ago. This country was in deep trouble.

We had borders that were a disaster. We had everything you could possibly have, including men playing in women's sports. Even the Supreme Court's taken care of most of that problem.

But we had a country that was in big trouble. It was being laughed at all over the world. We have the hottest country.

This is the hottest country in anywhere in the world. So I saw him wearing the essentially Make America Great Again hat. And I know that he meant it as a very great compliment. And we appreciate it.

As far as the elections in Venezuela, they're not really ready for them yet. But boy, a lot of progress has been made.

Delcy's been doing a fantastic job, as you know. The amount of the amount of oil coming out of Venezuela right now, even before the big companies, you know, Exxon, all the big companies are looking at it. They're going there. It's very fertile territory.

But the amount of money being made by Venezuela now is more than they've ever made before. And we're taking a lot also for, you know, for efforts. And the money is being sent and the oil is being sent to Houston and Louisiana to be refined.

And we paid for the war many times over. It's been an amazing fact. And as you say, you know, I'm very popular in Venezuela because we're bringing tremendous economics back to the country.

And they were absolutely dying. They were in such trouble. And now Venezuela is becoming extremely successful.

They're taking in billions of dollars, selling millions and millions of barrels of oil. And we're getting some and they're getting some. And everybody's making a lot.

And it was dead before we got there. So it's been it's been an incredible relationship. They're not ready yet for the elections, but at some point, they will be.

And we're going to be standing right on top of it. I've known him for a long time. I've known that country.

And, you know, I own the Miss Universe pageant and Miss Venezuela always did very well in that pageant. So I know something about the country, but I've been I've known it for a long time. They're great people. Say hello, OK.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President about Iran. What is the exit strategy?

TRUMP: Well, I think there's a lot of them. There's a military exit where we just keep going just the way we are. And we can even make it a heavier dose.

And it's knocking out everything they have. Or there's a smarter strategy that you make a deal and they want to make a deal. I just don't think they're ready yet, but they do want to make a deal.

Sometimes they don't want to say they want to make a deal. They want to be the tough guys, but they do want to make a deal. There's two ways.

I mean, it's you can just keep doing exactly what we're doing and take them apart piece by piece. We could do it in a more rapid fashion, which we might do, or we can negotiate with them, which we're also doing right now. I mean, as we speak, we're talking to them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And you said today that Russia and China are not helping. Earlier this week, the War Secretary Hegseth said that they are enabling.

[15:35:00]

So what is the difference?

TRUMP: Well, I don't know that they're enabling. I mean, I will tell you that President Xi said he will not partake. And President Putin said the same thing.

I think, you know, I trust them. Do they -- they've had a long term relationship.

There could be some things to do. But thus far, at least it has not been major. I don't think they'd want to have me disappointed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A different story, not Iran. There's this nasty parasite that is giving people in nine states explosive diarrhea. When is it going to be safe to eat lettuce again?

TRUMP: I don't know. I haven't thought about it. It's the first time I've been asked that question.

Are you eating lettuce recently?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I should always have more lettuce.

TRUMP: You want to get the hell out of here, Peter. No, it's a very interesting question from you. I didn't think you'd ask that kind of a question. Nobody wants to ask that question, but it's exciting.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's this food coming in, I guess, from Mexico. It's tainted. It's making a lot of people sick.

That is the CDC's terminology.

TRUMP: I think what we're going to do is we're going to put a major tariff on Mexico because of the lettuce. And we're going to put a big tariff on Canada because of the smoke. All right.

We're going to come. Which would you have? The lettuce or the smoke? I think I'll take the smoke.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, the smoke wrecks my daughter's swim meet.

TRUMP: Well, it's closed up a lot of country. I've told Canada they have to do something about it. You know, we've never had this problem.

All of a sudden, we have this problem with Canada. So we'll have to talk to them about that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you, sir. Follow up on Iran. Have you made a decision about the major strikes that you're referring to?

TRUMP: No, I haven't.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. Should we expect to see major strikes?

TRUMP: Look, we're talking to them right now. I think they're getting more and more serious as the days go by, for maybe the obvious reason. But we are talking to them right now.

Look, there are two ways. I consider that the smarter way, but the other is probably the easier way doing what we're doing. And we can take that to a much higher level if you want to.

You know, we're prepared to do that. As you know, we're locked and loaded. We're locked and loaded and ready to go.

But we're talking to them. So I think while we're talking, we'll see what comes of it. And I believe, I believe, Jeff, they're very serious.

They should be.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And when you say that you're talking, is it Mr. Kushner or Mr. Witkoff or who's involved in those talks?

TRUMP: Sort of everybody. J.D. and Marco and a lot of people to talk to. A lot of people to talk to.

It's a big deal. But really, when you get right down to it, it's not very complex. They cannot have a nuclear weapon.

You know, very, very simple, actually. But it's a -- it's a big deal. They cannot have a nuclear weapon.

If they have even a thought of a nuclear weapon, we will just continue to go at much higher levels. But we are talking right now and we'll see what comes of it. I'm not, you know, despite what everyone says about the election, I'm not in a hurry.

I'm not in a hurry. We have to do it right. Elections take care of themselves when you -- you know, when I went into Venezuela, everybody was against it.

Oh, what are you doing, going into Venezuela? And then two days later, they said, well, this is fantastic. A lot of people are saying that with Iran already because it would take them 25 years to rebuild already from what they have.

And again, as you know, no Navy, no Air Force, no anti-aircraft, no radar, no nothing. And we, as you know, we just put up reinstituted the -- I guess you could -- I call it the iron wall on the water. Nothing gets through.

Nothing blockade. Nothing gets through. And they sort of have to make a deal.

But we are talking to them. I think they're being serious. I think they are being by far the most serious that we've seen.

But that doesn't mean we get there. We'll see what happens. But I always prefer that alternative.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. President, I have an energy question. So Burgum might be able to help with this. So you have criticized windmills for quite a long time.

They're very ugly. They're not there. They tend to use more energy than they actually produce.

TRUMP: That's true.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A lot of people --

TRUMP: You've done your homework.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: -- a lot of people in Middle America, they are just so tired of seeing them continue to go up on farmland and stuff like that. Is there any way to -- is our federal government still funding in any way putting these up?

TRUMP: No, we have -- I can speak for Doug and then I let Doug speak because if he knows, I don't know that subject. Well, we have not approved anything have to do with windmills. They are horrible.

They are unsightly. They ruin housing values of people. If you're looking at a windmill or hearing a windmill because they're noisy, they kill all the birds.

They kill all the eagles.

[15:40:00]

You know, you shoot an eagle, you go to jail for two years. If you kill an eagle with a windmill, you don't go to jail and have hundreds of them laying on the ground.

You know, it's terrible. And they're very expensive. And they're all made in China. But China has very few windmills. You know, they have they're made in China, but China doesn't use them for the most part.

China actually uses coal, oil and gas, they use nuclear, by the way. They're getting very big in nuclear, I want to tell you, this little group. But they don't use wind.

Wind is inconsistent, it's unattractive, it's very expensive. It's probably the most expensive form of energy, so I've been talking about it. We essentially, unless there's a trick reason, we will have hopefully no wind farms approved.

We're doing more than anybody ever in history, having to do with energy. But I've restricted wind farms -- windmills. Take a look at Palm Springs, California, where they have a wind farm.

As you enter beautiful Palm Springs, California, it looks like a junkyard. You have old ones, rotted ones, they're falling down all over the place. They don't want to bury it because they say the fiber that the blades are made out of should not go in the ground because it's going to poison the ground.

I don't know if that's true or not, but if it's not going to go in the ground, what do you do with it? Put it up in the air?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

TRUMP: So good. I see you're not a fan of windmills.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, I'm not a fan of windmills, Mr. President. I'm very passionate about this.

TRUMP: Do you want to speak about that first?

DOUG BURGUM, SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR: No, but I would say, yes, President Trump has wisely understood that wind was unreliable, intermittent, dependent on the weather, only existed particularly offshore because of massive subsidies. So not only was it expensive ...

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: All right, the president there talking about the Iran war, heralding this nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia, and also notably, he was asked by a reporter, a New York Times reporter about his threats to blow up civilian sites like power plants, roads, bridges, and the question based on the premise that many countries consider that to be a war crime to blow up civilian sites. I'm paraphrasing the question, but he was asked if he considers that to be, and he wouldn't answer. Instead, he insulted the New York Times.

Notably, he's very upset with the New York Times right now. We should note that the Department of Justice actually just withdrew subpoenas for three New York Times reporters yesterday who had reported on security concerns about that airplane that was gifted by Qatar to the president to be used as Air Force One. The president was very upset about that, and that happened after a federal judge excoriated those prosecutors for errors in filing their subpoenas.

He was also asked, he said for the first time about the cyclospora outbreak.

BRIAN ABEL, CNN HOST: Yes, and he was asked in quite an interesting way, asked about explosive diarrhea in the Oval Office, and he talked about that.

He also talked about Venezuela's elections. He was asked about that, saying that progress has been made in Venezuela, but they're not there yet. He said the acting president is doing great, and lots of oil is coming out of the country.

And then in Iran, he was asked about the exit strategy, and he said there's two of them, a military strategy and a, which keep doing what they're doing. And I think this is a direct quote, take them apart piece by piece, or they can negotiate.

KEILAR: Yes, we'll see if that brings them to the table. He's obviously hoping they will. We're going to get in a quick break.

We do have some expert analysis from a former Trump administration official, foreign policy official. So we'll talk about sort of those two strategies and see if they're sound right after this.

[15:45:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ABEL: Right now, President Trump speaking to reporters from the Oval Office, and a few moments ago, he talked about the intensifying U.S. attacks on Iran. The president was asked if he trusts that China's President Xi and Russian President Putin were not helping Iran, and here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I will tell you that President Xi said he will not partake, and President Putin said the same thing. I think, you know, I trust them. Do they -- they've had a long-term relationship, there could be some things to do, but thus far, at least, it has not been major. I don't think they'd want to have me disappointed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: We're joined now by Kirsten Fontenrose. She was formerly the senior director for the Gulf on the National Security Council during the first Trump administration. I wonder how you're reading this, because the defense secretary was clear when he testified that to varying degrees, China and Russia have been enabling Iran in this war.

The president publicly is saying something differently. Why?

KIRSTEN FONTENROSE, FORMER SR. DIRECTOR FOR THE GULF, NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL: The president has long-term goals with Russia and China, and some of the messaging is intended to keep them a little bit on the fence. He's got pending trade talks with China that are forever on the horizon, and he wants to make sure that China becomes more dependent on importing U.S. energy than it does on Iranian energy. So you need to incentivize that. You need to sound like you're a friendly player.

And with Russia, he has interest there as well. He wants to make sure that Russia plays on the global energy market. Russia's part of OPEC Plus. He's given them a buy on some of their sanctions waivers during the Iran war. Right now, they've had 150 of their tankers attacked by Ukraine.

So the energy crunch isn't just the Iran war, it's also Ukraine's war effort. Good for that effort. Tough for the president when it comes to global oil prices.

[15:50:00]

But in terms of the Secretary of Defense's comments, yes, if you were Russia and China, why would you sit this out, frankly? If you're Russia, having Iranian oil off the market means yours is more expensive, which helps you fund your war effort. You want that.

And if you're China, watching the U.S. military performance in this conflict is a great way to get a feeling for how a potential future adversary might perform in a conflict with you. It's just too good to pass up.

So I think what the secretary is reflecting is that there are reasons both of these adversary bad friends would want to be involved. And what the president is saying is, I'm trying to get them tied into us economically so they'll be less adversarial in the future, and I'm going to message that way.

ABEL: When you heard the president in the Oval there talking about an exit strategy for Iran and saying that there's basically two options, there's the military exit and then there's the smarter make a deal exit. When he was talking about the military version, we keep doing what we're doing, take them apart piece by piece. Do we see this working in any fashion at this moment, getting them closer to a deal?

FONTENROSE: We have seen that they've decreased their launch volume by over 90 percent. So they are still lobbing missiles. They are still firing drones.

But that's put the other way around. But they have decreased that by 90 percent. So we do know that their strike capability is reduced.

But we haven't seen a change their calculus on whether they decide to act against even mediators, oil tankers. But I think there's a third option. Military is intended to degrade their ability long term to strike ships in the in the strait.

And then the diplomatic effort is to see if we can drive a wedge between hardline IRGC and some of the folks who are more interested in a future that would be more financially beneficial for them and more prosperity oriented for Iran. There's a third scenario, I believe, that would involve the U.S. saying, hey, Iran can no longer build a nuclear weapon and we've achieved our conventional military objectives about degrading their military.

We're successful. We're going home. It's time for Europe to take over an escort mission. We're out of here.

KEILAR: We had Congressman Jake Auchincloss on the program earlier, and I said to him something that I've been asking a lot of Democrats, which was, I mean, are you really proposing to just kind of pack up and go home? And he essentially said, yes, that the reality is this is how it is, that things are worse than when the war started. And I wonder just what you think about that thinking, that analysis, that this is sunk costs and maybe the administration just has to accept it, that this unintended consequence of gumming up the strait and now putting control of it with Iran, you're just going to have to accept it and going on and on and on with all of this fighting just prolongs --

ABEL: Cut your losses.

KEILAR: Yes, like cutting your losses. What do you think?

FONTENROSE: I think it's possible that that might be what happens, just because we are up against a political deadline of midterms and Iran knows it, so they're likely to try to outlast this.

I don't think that it's really cutting losses in a way that there are losses that are greater than we started. I mean, we do have no nuclear weaponization program in Iran. We do have the degradation of their military.

There are some things that were gained and it leads --

KEILAR: You think there's no nuclear program?

FONTENROSE: Not right now. There's no weaponization. So they keep trying to restart and we're finding new locations we think they're trying to build, but there's no near-term threat like the administration thought there was at the beginning of this conflict. And we have eyes in the sky watching them extremely closely. We'll very likely know if they start to re-begin a program.

So the president can argue, hey, they can't threaten us with this in the near-term or even the medium-term, and their military really can't do as much to threaten our interests there. And we have good defenses heading out to the region every day, but I don't want to sustain multiple tankers, you know, multiple refuelers, B-2s out in that region. I'm going to leave the blockade on and I'm going to pack up the rest of the military and come home.

And if Europe or Asia find the blockade difficult because Iran, in return, blockades the rest of shipping, they can start an escort mission. They can put some skin in the game. This is more impactful for their economies than ours.

KEILAR: Kirsten Fontenrose, it's very interesting because just how does this end? Which is the thing we have to keep wondering. Appreciate you being with us.

We have some breaking news. Paramount just announced it will delay its takeover of Warner Brothers Discovery, which of course is the parent company of CNN, by several months, potentially well into 2027 as pending lawsuits play out in court.

ABEL: So big news here, big development. Let's go to CNN chief media analyst Brian Stelter. And Brian, what are you making of this new situation that we find ourselves in here with this merger?

BRIAN STELTER. CNN CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: Yes, this is one of the biggest merger battles in years and now it's an antitrust showdown. But Paramount Discovery this week, the goal inside that company was actually for this deal to close and to be controlled by Paramount as well as HBO, the Warner Brothers Studio, all those other assets.

[15:55:00]

Now this is going to be delayed for many months because there's been an agreement struck between the state attorneys general who are suing and the writers guild that's suing, all the parties involved who agreed to move straight to a jury trial. To skip some of the earlier stages of the legal process and get straight to a trial. Paramount says that's what they want.

Here's what the company says in a statement, quote, "Today's agreement's a big win because the result is exactly what we've sought from the outset, a direct path to a trial based on the evidence. This is the fastest and clearest way to prove that this transaction is good for competition, good for consumers, and good for creators, a conclusion dozens of other authorities around the world have already reached."

So Paramount is spinning this as a win, but it is a major setback for the company because this deal gets more expensive starting in October. That's why the company has been trying so hard to win approval by the end of September and take control.

As a practical matter, this means Paramount will not be owning this channel CNN in time for the midterm elections. That has been a concern some staffers have had given Paramount's close ties to the Trump administration. So that timing of this fall is basically off the table now because Paramount has agreed to delay the deal from taking effect until there's a jury trial or until June of 2027.

That seems like a long ways from now, and it is, but that's because it's going to take a while for the trial to actually happen. We don't know exactly how many months this will all go on -- long for, but this will definitely now drag out for the rest of the year and possibly into early 2027. So a major setback for Paramount, making the Warner deal more expensive, but the company is signaling it is continuing to be committed to this acquisition.

It is one of the most dramatic merger deals we've seen in quite a while. And for those state attorneys general, they are going to fight hard in court to try to stop the deal altogether. KEILAR: All right, Brian, thank you so much for that. Obviously, very big news here is Paramount is announcing today that its takeover of Warner Brothers Discovery, which, again, is CNN's parent company, will be delayed for many months, potentially well into 2027 due to these pending lawsuits.

"THE ARENA" with Kasie Hunt starts right after a quick break.

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