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Sources: Trump Angry Over Reports of Depleted Munitions; Sources: Senior Commanders Warned of "Dangerous Low" Munitions; Vance: Peace Negotiations with Iran "Going to be Messy"; Data Center Construction Meeting Public Resistance; Testimony Resumes in Trial of Mom Accused of Killer Her 3 Children 3-3:30p ET

Aired August 06, 2026 - 15:00   ET

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

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: ... nomination or any sort of party line vote and there is -- with McConnell gone it's now 52-47. And Susan Collins of Maine plans to vote against Todd Blanche which means they can only afford to lose one more Republican vote at most and two Republican senators, Susan Collins and Bill Cassidy are none -- have not decided how they would vote at this moment.

So, if they both vote no, Mitch McConnell absence could mean Todd Blanche doesn't get the job. Brianna.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Yes. Something to watch there. Manu, thank you so much.

And the next hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: Downplaying Munitions Reports: President Trump says the U.S. has, quote, "massive amounts of munitions," just as senior officials tell CNN the President is growing angry over the reports arguing it makes the country look weak.

And Legal Battle Ahead: Senator Rand Paul planning to deliver the contempt referral against Dr. Anthony Fauci by hand to the DOJ after a Senate committee voted to hold the doctor in contempt of Congress.

And Change of Plans: the President's son says the new Air Force One might not end up at Trump's presidential library in Miami after all.

We're following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

There's mounting frustration within the White House but not about the dwindling munitions from the war with Iran, instead senior US officials say President Trump is venting about the reports on those diminished stockpiles, believing they put the United States in a weaker negotiating position.

Now, publicly the President is downplaying concerns about the shortages, claiming the US has massive amounts of munitions. Despite his claim, sources tell CNN that military commanders have warned of, quote, "dangerously low," end quote, levels. CNN's Kevin Liptak joins us now from the White House. So, Kevin, what more are you learning on this front? What are you

hearing?

KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes, and it's clear the President is trying to tamp down on any suggestion that the United States doesn't have the weapons it's, it needs to continue fighting this conflict. And this really did come to a head, in a lot of ways, at the cabinet meeting that the President held last week at Camp David.

The President not necessarily lashing out at the dwindling stockpiles themselves, but really expressing frustration that this narrative has become public, that the stockpiles are getting smaller and smaller. The President very, very frustrated at the leaks about what exactly the U.S. has gone through in terms of weapons in the course of the war so far.

Now, it doesn't come as a surprise to the President that the stockpiles are getting smaller. This has been something that has been raised to him by military commanders dating all the way back to the beginning of the conflict, back in March. But he does seem to believe that the war is now at an inflection point as he tries to get the Iranians to return to the negotiating table, in part by threatening a major escalation. And the President's concern is that, if these reports are now out in the public, that that could weaken his hand as he tries to find a way to wind the war down.

Now, last night -- very late last -- actually, it was very early this morning, just after midnight, the President writing that the U.S. has massive amounts of munitions, especially of certain types. Additionally, large amounts are being manufactured and shipped to the U.S. as needed. Defense companies are building the largest number of plants and factories in our country's history.

Of course, the problem with that is, if they're only starting to build the plants now, it could potentially be years before weapons are rolling off those plants' assembly lines. Now, the President is trying to make clear that his frustration is not directed at the Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. He wrote in a separate two social posts that he is extremely happy with the job that Pete Hegseth is doing.

But still, I think, in all of this, the President seems to be tacitly confirming that this is a concern, saying that the leakers would be prosecuted. It's not a crime to leak false information, so I think implicitly saying there that, yes, the weapons stockpiles are of a concern to the administration.

JIMENEZ: All right, Kevin Liptak, really appreciate the reporting. Brianna.

KEILAR: All right, let's talk about this now with former State Department spokesperson under President Biden and former National Security Council Special Advisor Matt Miller.

Matt, thank you so much for being here. You're hearing the differing kind of talking points that we're

getting, President Trump insisting there's massive amounts of munitions despite the reporting, and there's quite a bit of it. You have Senate Majority Leader Thune calling it concerning.

Will the additional defense funding that the administration is asking for, solve this issue of munitions, or is this a time problem, that it takes time to get those munitions reinstated?

[15:05:06]

MATT MILLER, FORMER STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESPERSON UNDER BIDEN: It will help solve the problem, but it won't solve it overnight. It does take time to build up those munitions. We've seen missile defense system being -- being the -- the most important essential resource available to the U.S. military and our allies around the world for years now. It was a problem, of course, that Ukraine has faced, that they faced at the outset of the war, that they continue to face.

And the Biden administration actually did work with defense contractors to ramp up the production of Patriot missiles. It went from somewhere around 300 a year right before the Russian invasion of Ukraine to over 600 a -- a year last year. But that's far short of what we need, and it's certainly short of what we need when we blow through them all, as we have over the last few months in a war with Iran.

KEILAR: Which American adversaries do you think look at this information with the most interest and, perhaps, maybe considering how they're going to approach some decisions themselves?

MILLER: Well, look, Iran, of course, is the first one. And the President is right to say that this disclosure does give Iran leverage in the negotiations. He's right to be angry about that, but it's a little ironic for him to say that because I don't think there's anything that has given Iran more leverage in these negotiations than the President constantly making threats that he then backs down from, from him signaling over and over again that he is more desperate for a deal than the Iranians are. He has surrendered our leverage far more than these reports have.

And, of course, the underlying problem isn't the reports, it's the actual facts themselves. And so you first look at what it does to our ability to negotiate a successful outcome or a less disastrous outcome to this conflict with Iran, that it's a problem there. But when you look around the world, Russia knows that we have fewer Patriot batteries and fewer Patriot interceptors to supply to Ukraine. And then the one you really worry about is President Xi.

Look, if President Xi were to decide to invade Taiwan, these are crucial systems. And it's not just our air defense systems. It's also Tomahawks, whereby some reports we have expended 50 percent of our supplies during this war. It's ATACMs, where a report today said that they have been virtually exhausted and we have almost none left. All that would be used in the defense of Taiwan that are now not available. Look, you hope that President Xi isn't going to make that decision, but the world is a dangerous and unpredictable place. No one thought in 2020 that Vladimir Putin was going to launch a war against Ukraine, and he did. It is -- it is the fact that the world is such a dangerous and unpredictable place is why you only use these systems when it's absolutely necessary, and you certainly don't spend them on a war of choice.

KEILAR: You want to preserve your means there. All right, I want to listen to something that the Vice President said. He was on Fox last night, and here's part of it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I do think that where we will ultimately land, it's going to be messy and it's going to take some time to get there. Where we will ultimately land, as you see oil, I think, was at $79 today. Those oil prices are going to come down and stay down. Iran will never have a nuclear weapon, and the United States will be in a stronger position. But we're kind of in the middle of the game, and I think people are trying to -- to prejudge exactly how this is going to go.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Do you see a situation where the U.S. will be in a stronger position, if not in the near term, in the long term?

MILLER: Absolutely not. First of all, let's remember that when we first agreed to this memorandum of understanding with Iran back in June, and we all saw the text and said this is basically a surrender by the United States on all the key points of leverage, and the Vice President came out and said, no, we have understandings, we have verbal understandings with Iran. The Strait of Hormuz is going to be open. It's going to be treated as international waters. And, of course, over the last few months, that has proven not to be true.

When you look at the outcome of this war, I think it's clear, looking back, that the President launched this war without any strategy, without any defined objectives, didn't know how to meet them, and he lost the war, and then he lost the negotiation. And the claims that the Vice President and the President made back when they agreed to this first memorandum of understanding, that the Strait would be free and open, have proven not to be true.

And when we tried to -- to tell ships to navigate through the Strait along the coast of Oman, and Iran objected, ultimately we gave in. And it looks like, according to reports of what the deal that we're about to agree to now at the end of this, Iran is going to have control the Strait of Hormuz, and that leads them -- it leaves them in a much stronger strategic position than they were -- were when the war began.

KEILAR: But I wonder what you think it looks like for the U.S. wrapping this up when that does happen. I interviewed in Democratic Congressman Jake Auchincloss, who's a Marine veteran, a couple weeks ago, and I said to him, I assume that you don't just see picking up and going home as a possibility for how to deal with this. And he said, actually, he did. He did see that as a possibility, to immediately end the war, because he said the other possibility, this is his quote, is a quagmire that rhymes with the debacles with Iraq and Afghanistan.

What do you think about that? What does that look like, to just immediately withdraw if, even if it's it coming to an agreement of some kind with the straight, some kind of withdrawal?

MILLER: Well, look, one of the rule -- the first rule of holes is, when you're in a hole, you stop digging. And it would be good if the President recognizes that, were, you know, he's in a hole and -- and he stops digging.

[15:10:00]

But when you look at the -- the scenario that we're in now, to make decisions about where to go forward, you have to presuppose all the mistakes that have led us here to it today. And, unfortunately, we have made those mistakes. The President has made those mistakes. It is -- I think it is clear that the best outcome is to get the Strait of Hormuz open and then to try to negotiate an end to the Iranian nuclear program. Remember, that's what we supposedly started this war for.

But the thing I most worry about is all of the promises that the President and the Vice President made when they signed this memorandum of understanding on June 24th, that we would ultimately get to an end to the nuclear program. We haven't seen the first promise, that the Strait of Hormuz be achieved, and in return we are giving the Iranians sanctions relief so they can sell oil in the international market. We are unfreezing billions of dollars of assets.

And if we can't even achieve the first outcome, which is just to get us to a worse strategic position than we were before the war started, it leads you to wonder whether we can ever get what's ultimately in the National Security interest of the United States, and that's an end to Iran's nuclear ambitions.

KEILAR: Matt, thanks for being with us. Matt Miller, we appreciate it.

MILLER: Thank you.

KEILAR: Still to come, Big Tech wants to build new data centers, but they're struggling to break ground, and we'll show you why.

Plus, an unprecedented escalation in the legal battle over Dr. Anthony Fauci. Senator Rand Paul says contempt referrals will be hand- delivered to DOJ today after a Senate committee voted to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress.

And then later, emotional reactions to new testimony in the triple murder trial of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother accused of murdering her three children.

We'll have that and much more coming up on CNN News Central.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:16:00]

JIMENEZ: Now to the delay on data center construction. A recent Gallup poll showed 71 percent of Americans oppose them, and governments are responding. About a dozen states have proposed moratoriums on building them, and that includes New York, which actually put its hold in place.

Earlier, New York's governor told me she was simply responding to what she hears from residents of her state.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. KATHY HOCHUL (D) NEW YORK: Data centers consume enormous amounts of energy, and I don't want anything to drive up the rates for utilities, for my rate payers, my families, my businesses at all. So, we put a moratorium in place, said, you want to come to New York, you have to bring your own power, or you pay a premium into our grid. You also have to have substantial benefits for communities.

So, I would say this is a reaction to the anxiety we're hearing around this, the enormous consumption of space they take up. It's not a ban. It is simply saying, I want to be the first to get it right.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JIMENEZ: Let's go now to CNN Senior Business Reporter David Goldman.

And, David, look, before we get into the construction delays, can you just talk about, really, the overwhelming demand and tech companies' really big plans at this point to try and meet that demand?

DAVID GOLDMAN, CNN BUSINESS SENIOR REPORTER: Yes, they have huge demand for this. In fact, we're looking at, you know, we have 5,000 data centers in this country today. That might surprise a lot of folks because, you know, we think about A.I. as this new technology. Well, data centers power, you know, the apps on your phone, your email. These have been around for a while. But they have announced 4,000 new data centers, these AI companies.

So, the thing is, there is tremendous demand, Omar, for the technology and for these data centers. The thing is, only 800 of them are currently under construction. And so, these delays are preventing the AI companies from doing the kind of things that they want to do. We're looking at about 50 percent of the company's data centers that are supposed to be built in the next two years. They are going to be built a little bit later than that, according to Goldman Sachs. Those are getting delayed.

We also have these massive construction delays, 60 percent of the data centers that are supposed to be built next year, by the end of '27, well, they haven't even begun construction, Omar. And 7 percent that have, well, those are delayed. And so, you can get a sense of what is the problem here. We have a significant problem when you have 800 of the 4,000 data centers that are actually getting built. JIMENEZ: You know, what -- I guess those numbers are pretty stark

there, that difference, but what is actually behind all of these delays? Is it just that growing public opposition?

GOLDMAN: Well, that's a huge part of it. So, what Governor Hochul is saying isn't unique to New York. It's also something that Texas has done, a moratorium there. But there are other reasons beyond public sentiment. So, if you want to build a data center, where are you going to get the materials, especially the chips? We all know that chip shortages are so significant that, you know, the cost of your Mac and your iPad is going up, right? We all know that.

Power, as Governor Hochul mentioned, that is a major concern. But even if it wasn't, how are you going to build the things without people to build them? We know immigration policy has restricted the amount of labor that we have, and then public opposition for sure.

Now, there was a plan in place, if every A.I. company got what it wanted, to build 565 gigawatts of power. To put that in perspective, that's 10 times what we have now. Columbia thinks that it's going to be a little bit less, and that has a lot to do with the cost, $8 billion per data center.

[15:20:02]

Omar, there's a lot that's standing in the way of A.I. companies realizing this dream that they have. Public opposition is just one of those things.

JIMENEZ: I was going to say, any time you start with a B, that is a big threshold for leadership to continue forward. David Goldman, appreciate it, as always.

Meanwhile, for us, coming up, testimony resumes in Lindsay Clancy's triple murder trial. We'll tell you what one of her close friends told jurors about Clancy's mental state before she killed her three children. We'll have those details straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:24:55]

KEILAR: More testimony today in the triple murder trial of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mom who strangled her three children, the youngest just eight months old. Jurors heard from several family members, friends and child caretakers who described their interactions with Clancy. And we also heard from a medical examiner. CNN's Jean Casarez is following this trial.

Jean, what stood out in particular from the medical examiner's testimony?

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I think the gruesomeness of the killings. I mean, the horrific nature. And prosecutors always have to put the medical examiner on the stand to testify because it includes the elements of the crime they are trying to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. But it was the wailing of the defendant, the sobbing in the courtroom, that was in competition, at points, with the testimony that was coming from the witness. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In terms of the marks around Callan's neck and the petechiae around his eyes and face, did that give you an indication here of the mechanism of death for Callan?

DR. KIMBERLEY SPRINGER, MEDICAL EXAMINER: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And how so?

SPRINGER: So, it is consistent with a ligature strangulation, given that the abrasions are linear around his neck and there are petechial hemorrhages above the -- those lines of abrasion.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And based on your examination of Callan, did you come to a determination, based on your training and experience, to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, as to the cause of his death?

SPRINGER: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And what was that?

SPRINGER: Complications of mechanical asphyxia.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CASAREZ: Another witness for the prosecution was a childhood friend of Lindsay Clancy who testified that, near the end, before this happened, she noted some very unusual statements out of Lindsay's mouth. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMY BEVINS, LINDSAY CLANCY'S CHILDHOOD FRIED: She had shared that she had been taking a medication that caused her to have some dark thoughts, but that she was going to, or had been, weaning, like tapering off that medication, and was trialing new ones that would remove those side effects and be more helpful and therapeutic to what she needed.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And did she tell you what those dark thoughts were?

BEVINS: No.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CASAREZ: And childhood friends also said that there were no external symptoms, that she was normal, she was calm, she was relaxed. They never had any idea anything was happening to her. And these are prosecution witnesses to prove that this was an intentional killing. Tomorrow, there are going to be, we just heard an argument, there are going to be prescribers, doctors who prescribed some of this medication for Lindsay Clancy, taking the stand in the prosecution's case.

KEILAR: All right, Jean, we'll be looking for that. Jean Casarez, thank you.

And remember, help is available if you or someone that you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or mental health. Just call or text Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988.

And ahead, Anthony Fauci held in contempt of Congress. What happens next now that Senator Rand Paul says the referral will be delivered directly to the attorney general?

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