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Arash Azizi is Interviewed about Iranians; Meta and YouTube Found Liable; Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL) is Interviewed about Iran. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired March 26, 2026 - 06:30   ET

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

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[06:34:30]

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They need the money. Everybody needs to pay their bills. So, basically they need to have their families taken care of. And it's not fair.

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AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: A flier in Houston there sympathetic with TSA agents. These are now live images from outside George Bush Airport where wait times to get through security are clocking in at more than three and a half hours.

On Wednesday, negotiations fell apart in the Senate that would have funded the Department of Homeland Security.

Good morning, everybody. I'm Audie Cornish. Thank you for joining me.

[06:35:02]

It is now half past the hour. And here's what's happening right now.

The investigation into the plane crash at LaGuardia Airport, it's now stretching nationwide. NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy says they will be looking at air traffic control staffing across the country.

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JENNIFER HOMENDY, CHAIR, NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD: In this investigation, we will look at controller staffing during that mid shift. We will look at controller staffing entirely in this tower, but then across the national airspace.

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CORNISH: Now, there were only two air traffic controllers on shift at the time of that deadly collision. The two pilots were killed when they struck a fire truck on the runway. And today in -- today, Venezuela's ousted president, Nicolas Maduro,

and his wife will appear in a New York federal court. His attorney will argue the U.S. government is violating Maduro's constitutional right to defend himself. The lawyers say the Treasury Department has revoked a license that allows Venezuela to pay their legal fees. Prosecutors say the couple can still use their personal money. Both Maduro and his wife have pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking charges.

And Savannah Guthrie sits down for her first interview since her mother, Nancy, went missing nearly two months ago. In a gut-wrenching clip released by NBC, Guthrie describes the agony her family feels.

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SAVANNAH GUTHRIE, "TODAY" CO-HOST: I wake up every night, in the middle of the night, every night, and in the darkness I imagine her terror.

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CORNISH: Nancy Guthrie was taken from her home in Arizona the night of January 31st, without her phone or critical medications. The search for the 84-year-old is ongoing.

And this just in, Israeli sources say they have killed an Iranian navy commander. They did not provide many details, but they did say it was the commander behind the near total blockade in the Strait of Hormuz.

And the U.S. and Iran are now laying out very different visions for how this war will end. The White House claims there are productive, ongoing talks with Iran. Iran has not accepted a 15-point plan offered by the U.S. to end the war. Iran says they've only exchanged messages with the U.S.

Stuck in the middle of all this, this geopolitical standoff, everyday Iranians who vented their frustrations to CNN in recent phone interviews.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE, IRANIAN RESIDENT (through translator): I'm so angry. I feel like we're just a plaything. We've been toyed with. When Trump said, help is on the way, we'll save you, and it amounted to nothing, which was obvious for some of us, but some of us believed it and it deeply divided us.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE, IRANIAN RESIDENT (through translator): I am pissed off. I am hopeful. I am scared. I'm all of these things all at once, and it's suffocating, quite frankly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Joining me now to talk about what's going on, Arash Aziz. He's a contributor at "The Atlantic." And we're talking because you also reached out to people who live in Iran, some people who escaped just before the war. And I was wondering if you could talk to me about what they are saying now.

ARASH AZIZI, CONTRIBUTOR, "THE ATLANTIC: If there's one mood overall, it's the mood of people being terrified and really worried. They're worried about the war continuing. It's hitting them hard. I speak to people sometimes, you know, an hour, a couple of hours after their home was hit, their windows were broken. These Iranians have never seen wars like this. I mean there was one war last year for 12 months -- for 12 days, and they had never seen something like this.

So, they're often very terrified of the war, but they're also terrified of, too, you know, what happens when the war stops? You know, what the regime is going to do to them. So, it's a situation of helplessness, of worry for themselves and their safety and, frankly, for the future of our country, which is very threatened in many ways.

CORNISH: When the president first launched U.S. strikes, first announced the launch of U.S.-Israeli strikes, he said this. I want to play a portion for you.

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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: To the great, proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand. Stay sheltered. Don't leave your home. It's very dangerous outside. Bombs will be dropping everywhere. When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.

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CORNISH: You do have an Iranian leadership that has been decapitated in some ways. You do have the navy going down. You do have long-range missile systems that have been destroyed. Can you talk about the disconnect between the military gains and this moment that the president promised?

[06:40:00]

AZIZI: Well, the Islamic Republic continues to control the streets, the security forces. And the opposition, unfortunately, it still doesn't have the necessary sort of organization to challenge it.

Now, of course, it is possible that after the war ends, in whatever shape, in the aftermath there might be mass uprisings, there might be a sort of challenge to the regime. But it would be quite difficult to bring it down even then, because even though the regime has been, yes, its military capabilities have been weakened, but it continues to have a lot of repressive capacity.

Look, there's a -- the real disconnect is that the president, and from the very beginning has spoken of two goals that are not necessarily to have -- not necessarily to do with each other. One is like regime change. And, you know, preparing the conditions for regime change as he has spoke here. The other is degrading Iran's capability to project power beyond its borders. These are two very different things. And the latter, you know, doesn't really do anything about the former.

CORNISH: J.D. Vance may be potentially leading some kind of talks in Pakistan in the coming days. What are you seeing in the potential off ramp here? The plans offered by, let's say, the U.S. administration.

AZIZI: The problem with the plans by the U.S. administration is that, you know, they aim at a, you know, grand reckoning, a sort of big deal that would once and for all solve all the problems that the U.S. has had with Iran for decades. And, you know, that seems to be something that President Trump is going for. That's something that he likes.

I don't think the Islamic Republic is in the mood to make that sort of deal. I mean it's just gone through this existential crisis. It's passed (INAUDIBLE) showed that it can survive. From the perspective of itself, it doesn't clear why it would make that historic deal, which would mean, you know, giving up on, frankly, on its identity and many things about it.

I do think it's possible for something like that to happen down the road. But in this round, in this round of talks in Pakistan, if they come, I will find it surprising. I think it's much more likely that if there is going to be some sort of an agreement, it would be much more limited and it would be more like a return to status quo ante bellum (ph) --

CORNISH: Yes.

AZIZI: You know, the right things in February 28th, not some grand reckoning that finally ends the dispute that has gone since 1979 between Iran and the United States.

CORNISH: Arash, I've run out of time, but if you could answer this one, is there a fear that Iranians will end up like those in Afghanistan, right? You end up with the same leadership that you had before.

AZIZI: There is a -- there's definitely a, you know, fear of even worse, of -- there's Iraq after 1990, for example, where, you know, before Bush decided to go in, in 2003, Saddam Hussein remained in place only ruling over a country that was ever more weak and, you know, economically poor. And so there definitely is that fear.

But it is also up to, you know, Iranians to realize, OK, it was perhaps naive. Some people thought that there could be a very quick change and we should find, you know, more lasting ways of how we can challenge the Islamic Republic. And I hope more Iranians see that. You know, it's not right to -- for them to put this hope on foreign wars and they must find ways of doing it themselves.

CORNISH: Arash Azizi, thank you so much.

AZIZI: Thank you.

CORNISH: I want to turn to something else here in the U.S., a landmark social media ruling. Tech giants have been found liable in a case about addiction. And this could set a significant precedent. The companies were accused of intentionally getting a young woman addicted to the apps, harming her mental health. The jury found Meta and YouTube negligent in their design of their platforms, and they were ordered to pay a combined $6 million in damages. The companies say they plan to appeal.

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MARK LANIER, PLAINTIFF'S LAWYER: Inside the company documents at Meta, they had some people who were asking, one day when all of this stuff gets out, are we going to be the big tobacco? Is that what we are?

And I think what we've got right now is the beginning of an answer to that.

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CORNISH: Joining me now, Sara Fischer, CNN's senior media analyst and senior media reporter at "Axios."

Sara, I've actually interviewed in the past some of the plaintiffs here when they went to the Supreme Court to try and overturn Section 230. They wanted to sue that way. What was different about the approach this time that ended up in success for these plaintiffs?

SARA FISCHER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA ANALYST: I think, Audie, it wasn't just them pointing to the way that these platforms were designed, although that was a big part of it. The plaintiffs also pointed to the fact that these big tech companies, Meta and YouTube, knew about some of these changes and these challenges for the users and didn't warn them.

[06:45:08]

They didn't do anything. So, it's not just about design. I think that's what's a little bit different.

I also think trying to tackle this from a way that says, you know, the law doesn't shield these companies was something we heard a lot of in this courtroom. To say that platforms are addictive is a very tough medical diagnosis to be able to compare it to something like -- to big tobacco. But to say that the way that this law is interpreted is not correct, that is a much easier argument. And I think that's somewhat of what this court case is going to show moving forward. Remember, there are thousands of other cases just like this that are pending.

CORNISH: And the public sentiment is very different when people talk about social media and young people.

I want to play for you the verdict, so to speak, on TikTok, sort of how people have been talking about their connection to social media.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I had to cut down my time on social media because it was getting to my head, and it's not healthy. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Every time I open up Instagram and I'm just

scrolling, I either get really sad or really anxious or just really overwhelmed.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm so scared of how addicted I am to short form content. I'm trying to change my life, and it's so hard.

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CORNISH: Now, Sara, as you've said, there's not a medical connection people can make, at least just yet. People are definitely researching it. But there are many, many more cases similar to this one working their way through the legal system. So, what can we expect?

FISCHER: I think you're going to expect plaintiffs to point to certain features that we might not have spoken about as much at length in this trial, but they're going to continue to get brought up. For example, things like beauty filters, that was brought up a little bit in this trial. You know, it's not just the addictive nature of scrolling, it's actually, can filters apply unfair beauty standards on young children that are going to influence them in certain ways? The gamification of these platforms, trying to solicit likes and so pushing content, pushing users, incentivizing them to push content where they're going to get more likes and more shares.

I think more trials are going to focus on a lot of that, as opposed to just the infinite scrolling nature of these platforms, in part, Audie, because it's not just these two platforms that do that kind of infinite scrolling. You now have news organizations that are putting scrolling vertical video on their apps. And so, I think they need to target -- they're going to target tech for some of these very unique to social media features moving forward.

CORNISH: And, of course, we're going to keep following this because, like the big tobacco thing, these legal cases can drag on for a while.

So, Sara, thank you for checking in with us.

FISCHER: Thank you.

CORNISH: Next on CNN THIS MORNING, you've got fliers who are frustrated. I see you. You're waiting in a long line at the airport. And now, I'm sorry to tell you, another deal has fallen apart in Congress.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The politicians need to get their head out of their ass.

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CORNISH: So, I'm going to ask a Republican congressman, Cory Mills, not that specifically, but about the topic.

And later on CNN, it's been two years since the Baltimore bridge collapsed. And CNN's Dana Bash has actually gone to that site to see how the rebuilding process is going.

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CORNISH: All right, so there are a lot more questions being asked about the war with Iran on Capitol Hill. There was this closed-door House briefing that led some to vent some frustration. And we're talking from both sides of the aisle. The chairman of the House Armed Services, Republican Mike Rogers, said after Wednesday's hearing, quote, "my hope is that the next briefing, and those thereafter, will be more fruitful."

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Would you support troops on the ground in Iran on this point?

REP. DERRICK VAN ORDEN (R-WI): No. I've been absolutely 100 percent crystal clear from the beginning, no.

REP. JASON CROW (D-CO): This war is now in its third, going into its fourth week. There are more questions than answers. We're not getting -- we're not getting answers from the administration on the end game.

REP. SETH MOULTON (D-MA): Coming out of this briefing today, I don't have any confidence whatsoever that they have a plan, a strategy, even very clear goals for what they want to do next.

REP. NANCY MACE (R-SC): Everyone needs to get the same briefing we received today and make that decision, is it right to go into a protracted, elongated war where soldiers are going to die? And right now, I am adamantly opposed to boots on the ground, based on the information that I have.

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CORNISH: Joining me now in the Group Chat, we have Congressman Cory Mills. He's a Republican from Florida, member of the House Armed Services Committee.

I wanted to talk to you because obviously you are a military man, but you've also been in these briefings. Answer the question from Nancy Mace.

Do you see a plan, or do you see a protracted war?

REP. CORY MILLS (R-FL): Well, I don't see a war, for sure. That's not what the president's objective has been from the very beginning.

I mean, if you think back, for example, to 2011 in Libya, one of the primary reasons that we went there, we didn't declare it a war, but a hostility, as the Department of Justice had clarified under U.N. regulations, is that there was no boots on the ground. It was about trying to protect innocent lives of civilians there. And I think with 40,000-plus people being completely just massacred

within the streets by trying to do what we would call the First Amendment, I think that the president looked at this, looked at the overall nuclear threat. And I think that when we saw the fact that recently they were even launching hypersonic ballistic missiles --

CORNISH: Let me stop you there.

MILLS: They didn't have --

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CORNISH: No, no, here's the thing --

(CROSSTALK)

MILLS: Because we're calling it a war, but it's not actually a war.

CORNISH: Okay. So, you're saying that I think by most average people's understanding of seeing bombings every day --

MILLS: Right.

CORNISH: -- they think they're looking at a war.

And then when they hear someone like --

MILLS: Why wasn't a war in Libya then?

CORNISH: -- Lindsey Graham has talked about taking Kharg Island and compared it to Iwo Jima. Let me play this for you.

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SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): So here -- here's what I tell President Trump. Keep it up for a few more weeks.

[06:55:01]

Take Kharg Island, where all of the resources they have to produce oil, control that island. Let this regime down a vine.

We got two marine expeditionary units sailing to this island. We did Iwo Jima. We can do this.

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CORNISH: Then I had Mike Haridopolos on this show, Republican, also from Florida, and I asked him about boots on the ground. Here was his reply:

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REP. MIKE HARIDOPOLOS (R-FL): The last thing we want is boots on the ground. As you mentioned, our own son is in the United States military and a very cognizant. I know not only he, but all of his friends are thinking right now and we're optimistic we can finally take Iran off the map. That is all of our goals

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MILLS: Well, let me just start out by saying that Lindsey Graham doesn't speak on behalf of the Republican Party, and certainly not on behalf of most Americans who --

CORNISH: He speaks a lot for the White House.

MILLS: Well, I'll tell you right now, though, but if you look at it, Lindsey Graham would be willing to start a war over someone basically -- you know, porch pirating one of his Amazon packages.

CORNISH: So, are you worried the president listens to him?

MILLS: Well, the president listens to everyone, but that doesn't make his final decision. I mean, the president is one of those individuals that he collects intelligence from all areas. But at the end of the day, it's his decision.

He determines imminence, as Tulsi Gabbard talked about, and he gets to see intelligence that, you know, not all of us get a chance to see because he gets it from so many different factions within the I.C. community.

CORNISH: Yeah. But you're mentioning Tulsi Gabbard. That's a great example. Her chief of staff basically exited with a resignation letter saying that Iran was not an imminent threat.

MILLS: Her chief of staff also, as it was recently released, that he wasn't in a majority of the briefings that actually Tulsi was giving to the president and vice versa. Even John Ratcliffe, who is the CIA director and former ODNI who filled Tulsi Gabbard's position, even made it clear that, yes, there was in fact, nuclear capabilities that had been developed and that they were only moments away from being able to --

CORNISH: So, what I'm hearing from you is you're in the camp of there was an imminent threat.

MILLS: Uh-huh.

CORNISH: And that you're not calling it a war, even as we amass troops heading to the region, including land combat commander and paratroopers.

MILLS: Well, I think it's always the case. And look, I came from the 82nd Airborne Division. I served proudly in the 82nd, served in combat with the 82nd Airborne Division.

But it's interesting that no one was calling it a war whenever Obama found it to be totally fine in 2011 to launch for seven months -- by the way, seven months for Libya --

(CROSSTALK) CORNISH: I don't want to give you a hard time, but the people who are on their way there are not going to do the -- what happened with Obama.

MILLS: Well, guess what? May actually troops --

(CROSSTALK)

CORNISH: They are going to be in a mission.

MILLS: But let's go ahead and face the facts.

CORNISH: And I want to know if you agree with the mission.

MILLS: We deployed troops to Kuwait. We deployed troops to Saudi Arabia. We deployed to -- and none of them ever actually had gone into certain areas. They were actually pre-positioned, basically contingent.

CORNISH: So that's --

MILLS: The idea as well, is that force presence. Force presence and force protection is a very important thing in the military. Being able to demonstrate strength actually does get results in negotiations. And we've seen that time and time out.

So having positions actually prepared and have people in the country doesn't mean we're putting boots on the ground and war starting.

MIKE DUBKE, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: Look, I'm -- I'm with the congressman here. Escalate to deescalate. That is a -- that is a path forward. And I think that's what we're seeing. I'm not --

CORNISH: Here's the word from James Mattis, okay, former defense secretary.

"I can't identify a lot of good options. You can say it's over. You can even declare victory. And guess what? The enemy gets a vote."

MILLS: And guess what? James Mattis, and I couldn't identify him as a good secretary of defense. And that's why he also didn't last.

CORNISH: Does the enemy not get a vote?

MILLS: The enemy always has to be right 1 percent of the time. We have to be right 100 percent of the time. That's always been the case.

But the reality is this, what -- if we would have done nothing, we would have allowed 47 years of actual conflict against the Americans. If you go all the way back from the time that they, you know, took over 55 hostages, or the fact that they bombed the Beirut bombing or the fact that Soleimani and the Quds Force was killing Americans across the globe with proxy militias everywhere to include the EFPs (ph) that was maiming 600-plus people. So, you know, the idea is, is that we're already at conflict with

them. This is an evil dictatorship and regime who is killing young women like Mahsa Amini for the fact that she didn't want to wear a hijab. This is an oppressive area that basically subjugated women.

(CROSSTALK)

CORNISH: And then let me follow up on that last idea. We heard voices from Iran in the show earlier saying -- talking about feeling disappointed, feeling like if this administration walks away and they are left with a more angry, aggressive regime, that the U.S. would have betrayed them.

You have served. You've heard this argument in Afghanistan. What do you tell them now?

MILLS: Well, I can tell you one thing that we need to look at is who our global partners are in that region. If you look at what the UAE has said --

CORNISH: Are they right to feel betrayed?

MILLS: KSA -- I don't think the president has betrayed them. When he said help was on the way, was it not? And so, I think that they're getting a little ahead of their skis.

And also, the fact is, is that you don't go ahead and tell a forecast to the enemy what we're going to do. We don't give definitive timelines, here's when we're coming out, because what you do is you watch what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan, where they essentially sit back waiting for counterattack, counterinsurgency with a transitional government.

And so, you don't show your cards at every single poker table. And the president's basically -- to quote him -- escalating to de-escalate.

[07:00:02]

But he's also guaranteeing that all options are on the table for the regime to consider.

So, this is really about trying to ensure that this doesn't become a bigger global conflict, and we can get peace and stability within the region.

And the Iranian people can select their next leader.

CORNISH: Yeah.

MILLS: Whether that be Reza Pahlavi or whether that be someone from inside.

CORNISH: A monarchy?

MILLS: Transitional --

CORNISH: Yeah.

MILLS: Well, not even a monarchy. He doesn't want to come as a monarch. Reza has talked about that.

CORNISH: Well, we'll bring you back to talk more about it, because you've raised a lot of ifs, a lot of ifs, and a lot of people have questions about that.

MILLS: If's or stated facts (ph)?

(CROSSTALK)

CORNISH: Certainly in the polling, people are questioning what you're saying.

So, thank you, Cory Mills, for being here.

MILLS: Thank you.

CORNISH: I'm Audie Cornish, and the headlines are next.