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17 Americans from Hantavirus Cruise Ship Land in Nebraska; Trump: Iran's Response to U.S. Proposal "Totally Unacceptable"; Trump to Travel to Beijing; Hegseth Wants Legal Counsel to "Review" Sen. Kelly's CBS Interview. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired May 11, 2026 - 06:00   ET

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

[06:00:00]

BRAD SMITH, CNN ANCHOR: That does it for CNN Headline Express. I'm Brad Smith. CNN This Morning with Audie Cornish starts right now.

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: This just in, Americans on that cruise ship with the Hantavirus outbreak are now back in the U.S. They will soon head to a quarantine center in Nebraska. So, how do we know if they're carrying the virus?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MARK KELLY (D-AZ): We've expended a lot of munitions, and that means the American people are less safe.

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CORNISH: Now, those comments have the defense secretary calling for a new investigation of Mark Kelly. Did the senator reveal too much from a classified briefing?

And the president says Iran's response to the latest U.S. proposal is unacceptable. So. does this mean more talking in the days ahead or more war?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEAN DUFFY, SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION: We're encouraging everyone to go take a road trip to celebrate America's 250th birthday.

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CORNISH: The transportation secretary stars in a new reality show about hitting the road. Can real Americans afford a road trip with wartime gas prices? Plus, does AOC want Chuck Schumer's job or the president's?

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REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): My ambition is to change this country.

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CORNISH: Seventeen Americans from that Hantavirus cruise ship arrived back on American soil. At least one of them has tested positive for the deadly virus, another showing mild symptoms.

Good morning, everybody. I'm Audie Cornish, and we're following these breaking news developments overnight after this outbreak in the high seas. The second day of evacuations now underway. The first involved 94 passengers of 19 nationalities. The U.S. citizens will soon head to a highly specialized national quarantine unit in Omaha, Nebraska, and that's where they will be assessed. Passengers who do not have symptoms will not be tested for Hantavirus, and then they'll be taken to another treatment center before going home. But the big question this morning, what is the risk to the rest of us?

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DR. JAY BHATTACHARYA, ACTING HEAD, CDC: The idea is that you assess the risk of the person who has been exposed. If they don't have symptoms, they're not at risk of exposing others. But you do want to make sure that you check them regularly so that they don't have, if they develop symptoms or if there's other considerations.

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CORNISH: OK. We're bringing in CNN's Melissa Bell, who is in the Canary Islands. Melissa, this is a complicated operation. Can you talk about how it's working, getting everyone off the ship?

MELISSA BELL, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. Essentially, what we saw, Audie, were most of those passengers being taken off the ship, including the Americans that you mentioned, the French passengers as well. Amongst those two groups, of course, two new Hantavirus cases now confirmed, with all the difficulty that those people showing symptoms and carrying the virus can then present to others. Luckily, these are now in those being controlled and taken care of by specialists, both in Omaha and in Nebraska and in Paris.

But it is now 10 confirmed cases of the Hantavirus that have been found as a result of this cruise ship. Perhaps you can see just over my shoulder, Audie, the ship itself, the MV Hondius, is even now being refueled. There's a couple more groups of passengers that need to be taken off before it can continue its journey on to Holland, where the ship will be disinfected. There are 17 crew members, Dutch, that will be leaving the ship today. Also, the final group of passengers will be the Australians, plus one New Zealander, who will be evacuated, we understand, by this afternoon.

But yes, it has been a really complex operation, getting them from that ship via small ships onto the shore here, onto buses, and then onto their planes back home, even as, as we saw in those two new cases of the Hantavirus, even as whether or not they're symptomatic is carefully monitored, how much contact they have with others continues to be monitored, and even as the World Health Organization continues to understand more about this virus, how it spreads and how it can be contained, Audie. CORNISH: OK. That's Melissa Bell in the Canary Islands with that operation underway. I want to turn to this, the president rejecting Iran's latest response to the U.S. peace proposal. He called it totally unacceptable in a Truth Social post on Sunday.

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Now, Tehran state-run media reports that Iran's proposal sought recognition of sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, currently under dueling blockades. The country's state-run media made no mention of its nuclear program. And this week, Trump will travel to Beijing for talks with President Xi. Top of the agenda will be the war with Iran.

Joining me now, Peter Bergen, CNN national security analyst and vice president for global studies and fellows at New America. So, of course, the president rejected this. It did not deal with nuclear issues. But I'm curious about how you see the response. Iran just had a diplomatic meeting with China. And now, the very next conversation it has with the U.S., it doesn't seem very interested in making concessions.

PETER BERGEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST AND VICE PRESIDENT FOR GLOBAL STUDIES AND FELLOWS, NEW AMERICA: I mean, there is absolutely no concessions at all in this statement. If you go back three weeks, Audie, you remember Trump was saying publicly that they're -- yes, they've agreed to everything that we want. Well, here they've agreed to nothing. They have sovereignty over the Straits of Hormuz.

CORNISH: Which they didn't have at the start of this war.

BERGEN: Right. And I mention of the nuclear program is discussed. They want compensation for war damages, the lifting of sanctions. I mean, it's the most maximalist position they could possibly take.

CORNISH: I want to play for you another sort of actor in this U.S.- Israeli strikes, right? The prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, was on 60 Minutes. And he raised the question of their nuclear materials as well. Let's talk on the other side.

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BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: You go in and you take it out.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: With what? Special forces from Israel? Special forces from the United States?

NETANYAHU: Well, I'm not going to talk about military means. But the president -- what President Trump has said to me, I want to go in there. And I think it can be done physically. That's not the problem. If you have an agreement and you go in and you take it out, why not? That's the best way.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What if there isn't an agreement? Can it be taken out by force? NETANYAHU: Well, you're going to ask me these questions. I'm going to dodge them because I'm not going to talk about our military possibilities, plans or anything of the kind.

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CORNISH: So, you hear him in that cut basically saying, number one, he wouldn't say whether it would be U.S. or Israel's troops who would go in to do that. But we've talked so much on this show about the fact that much of the nuclear material is under rubble right now. Going in to get it is not as simple as it sounds.

BERGEN: I think it would be extraordinarily difficult. I mean, Joint Special Operations Command, which is SEAL Team 6 and Delta Force, practice for this kind of operation, removing nuclear materials from a particular country, say Pakistan, or in this case, Iran. That said, you'd also have to secure the Joint Special Operations Command --

CORNISH: Right. Because this has always been done during peacetime. It's not been done in a situation -- when I think of post-Soviet countries, to do it in what is essentially a hostile situation sounds a lot harder.

BERGEN: Yes, you'd have to have perimeters set up by rangers, hundreds of them, to make sure that the actual operation was being secured. It also would take some time. Presumably, you'd have to bring in evacuation equipment. I mean, none of this would be simple. I think it's almost impossible, really, in the real world. It might be easy to talk about it. But as a practical matter, I think it would be kind of A, a suicide mission and B, very hard to do.

CORNISH: What do you make of him talking about it?

BERGEN: Well, it's something that Trump has talked a lot about, the nuclear dust, and we're going to get it back. So, he may just be playing to that audience.

CORNISH: Can I ask you then, what is Trump's uphill battle when it comes to China? Is he going there to convince them to lean on Iran harder? Does he have any leverage to do that?

BERGEN: I don't think he does. I mean, obviously, the Iranians supply a great deal of oil to China. So, China has a lot of leverage over them. That said, you know, why wouldn't the Chinese let this play out a bit? I mean, it clearly is damaging the United States. Every passing day, the American economy, they have the largest oil reserves in the world. So, they can take a little bit of time here. They have a billion barrels of oil in reserve. So, I don't think they're in any rush to help Trump out, necessarily.

CORNISH: OK. We're going to see how that plays out. Peter, as always, I appreciate it. And coming up on CNN This Morning, we've got another Pentagon probe. This time, Senator Mark Kelly is dealing with the fallout from his recent comments on U.S. weapon stockpiles, which are raising concerns in Washington. Plus, how a person got onto a runway at Denver International Airport, was hit and killed by a Frontier flight. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reveals that he wants to wean the U.S., wants to wean off of U.S. military financial support.

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NETANYAHU: I've said this to President Trump. I've said it to our own people. Their jaws dropped.

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CORNISH: Hey, U.S. Senator Mark Kelly and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are still feuding. This time over what the senator said on Sunday.

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SEN. MARK KELLY (D-AZ): We've been briefed by the Pentagon on specific munitions, actually. It's been pretty detailed. On tomahawks, ATACMs, SM-3s, THAAD rounds, Patriot rounds, those interceptor rounds to defend ourselves. And the numbers are, I think it's fair to say it's shocking how deep we have gone into these magazines because this president got our country into this without a strategic goal, without a plan, without a timeline. And because of that, we've expended a lot of munitions.

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[06:15:00]

CORNISH: OK. Defense Secretary Hegseth reposted that clip on social media, but he also said this, quote, "Captain Mark Kelly strikes again. Now, he's blabbing on TV, falsely and dumbly," the secretary says, "about a classified Pentagon briefing he received. Did he violate his oath again?" He then promised to investigate the comments with the department's attorneys.

I'm bringing into the group chat on this Monday morning, Isaac Dovere, CNN senior reporter, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, CNN political analyst and White House correspondent for the New York Times, and Francesca Chambers, White House correspondent for USA Today.

So, this issue of whether or not the U.S. has an adequate supply of military materials has been around for a hot minute. I'm going to just show you a couple of the headlines, because I was not aware this was considered a secret. Zolan, let me start with you, just because the New York Times is the first clip there. Can you talk about this response by Hegseth, why he responded the way he did? Is it about Kelly, or is it about the issue?

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST AND WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Well, I mean, as you said, this has been a part of the public discourse for some time now, right? I mean, as President Trump gets ready to go to China, one of the storylines that we've all been asking about is whether the U.S.'s approach to Iran has, you know, created any other vulnerabilities when it comes to other crises around the world. So --

CORNISH: Even going back to Ukraine.

KANNO-YOUNGS: That's right.

CORNISH: How much the U.S. should give Ukraine became a talking point.

KANNO-YOUNGS: Trump campaign was talking about that as well, as do we have enough munitions in the United States for the, you know, national interests as well, or are we sending them all overseas? So, this is really a sort of public conversation and debate here, and this would be the second time that Mark Kelly has also been investigated or looked at by Pete Hegseth's Defense Department, too. We know that the administration has increased scrutiny of him, too. So, there's politics here as well.

CORNISH: Yes. Well, and then the writing was on the wall. In a recent hearing, this was an exchange between Kelly and Hegseth, again, specifically over this issue.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KELLY: OK. how many years to replenish? That's the question.

PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY: I think that's exactly the right question, too, Senator, because the time frame we were existing under was unacceptable.

KELLY: OK. Well, tell me --

HEGSETH: And what this budget does -- I mean, months and years, fast.

KELLY: Years.

HEGSETH: I mean, we're building new plants in real time.

KELLY: So, just to replace what we have expended --

HEGSETH: Two X -- I said months.

KELLY: And then you said years.

HEGSETH: It depends on the weapons system, but two to three, four X of what we have today.

KELLY: OK.

HEGETH: So, yes. We're dealing with a reality under the previous administration of what they sent to Ukraine and what they allocated elsewhere. KELLY: OK. I got it.

HEGSETH: So, we fired years' worth of munitions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FRANCESCA CHAMBERS, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, USA TODAY: So, part of the reason for this disagreement is because what Kelly is saying goes against the Trump administration's narrative here about the munition's stockpiles. The president himself has said that during the Biden administration, the U.S. depleted stockpiles to give those weapons to Ukraine. The U.S. doesn't just hand over weapons freely to Ukraine anymore. Those are paid for by NATO member nations, and then they're shipped to Ukraine now. So, he says that they've now been replenished.

And a few days ago, the president said, in fact, there are more than there was even before the Iran War. You have Democrats who are pushing back against that narrative, not just Mark Kelly. Ted Lieu yesterday also saying that munitions were dwindling in the United States. And to pick up on Zolan's point, this becomes very important as President Trump goes to China to meet with Xi Jinping because China has said that it needs to be ready, I guess, militarily to be able to either invade Taiwan or have a reunification with Taiwan as early as 2027. And there's this open question about whether the United States would come to Taiwan's aid and whether or not it would have the munitions to be able to do that.

CORNISH: Never mind that Iran is very much holding out and has not budged at all in the seeking of a compromise.

EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Yes, look. The Iran War started on February 28th. It's May 11th here. We are deep into this. We have no still clear explanation for how we got into it, why we got into it, what it is we're doing there, and certainly not for how it's going to end.

CORNISH: Yes.

DOVERE: Weeks ago, a month ago, the president was saying that we were talking to some of the top guys in Iran. Now, he says we're not talking to the right guys. We don't have any sense of what is happening. Zolan went to Pakistan a couple weeks ago to try to be there for the negotiations about things, and J.D. Vance never went. Zolan got to Pakistan and the vice president didn't.

CORNISH: And also, there's been a real sense from Hegseth about people asking questions. There is such thing for him as too many questions that somehow it is revealing to the enemy. And so, I feel like there's a real slap down any time someone gets specific and says, we need more information.

KANNO-YOUNGS: Yes, I mean, this administration hasn't embraced dissent, right, since President Trump came into office, whether that's, you know, reporters asking questions of the various different cabinet agencies, not just the Defense Department.

[06:20:00]

And often they try to frame it as, well, you are against the U.S. position here, just for asking questions for more information that can inform the public.

DOVERE: But the situation with Senator Kelly is obviously he has gotten into Secretary Hegseth's craw, and you go back to what it was that got Hegseth going in the first place, it was that video that was a number of members of Congress, Democrats, who were veterans, saying --

CORNISH: Yes. Saying, don't obey.

DOVERE: -- don't -- you don't have to obey an illegal order, just stating the military code.

CORNISH: Yes.

DOVERE: And Hegseth tried to strip him of his rank and his pension, Kelly went to court, Kelly has won that battle. And so, here Hegseth is trying to open up another fight.

CORNISH: Get another bite of the apple.

DOVERE: Right.

CORNISH: Well, Kelly's not backing down, we're going to keep an eye on this this week. You guys stay with me because there's more I want your conversation on.

Coming up on CNN, there's this courtroom showdown over claims of stolen music. So, we're going to talk about Beyonce's fight to protect her sound, which is going to trial today.

Plus, what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said or did not say when asked about running for president. And good morning from the Gulf Coast in Orange Beach, Alabama.

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[06:25:00]

CORNISH: It is 25 minutes past the hour. Here is your Morning Roundup. Some of the stories you might have missed. Now, in just a few hours, the trial will begin for a man accused of stealing Beyonce's personal belongings, including hard drives containing unreleased music. This happened last summer while she was in Atlanta. The suspect could face six years in jail if convicted. The stolen items, however, were recovered.

An investigation is underway to find out how a man got on to a runway at Denver International Airport. This person was hit and killed Friday night by a Frontier Airlines flight as it was taking off. Passengers were evacuated onto the runway after the engine caught fire. No one on board the plane was seriously hurt. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he wants to wean Israel off of U.S. military support. In an interview with CBS' 60 Minutes last night, he says Israel receives about $3.8 billion of U.S. military aid a year. And Netanyahu says the timetable is immediate.

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NETANYAHU: I said, let's start now and do it over the next decade, over the next 10 years. But I want to start now. I don't want to wait for the next Congress. I want to start now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: OK. Bringing back the Group Chat. I think I know why he wouldn't want to wait for the next Congress. But what are your ideas about why he's talking like this now?

DOVERE: Well, first of all, $3.8 billion is a lot to start weaning yourself off of. I'm not sure what that weaning process looks like. But also, look. at this point, yes, Democrats may take over the majority in at least one of the chambers of Congress. But whether it's Democrats or Republicans, aid to Israel is much more of a problem.

CORNISH: I was going to say, the call is coming from inside the House of Conservatives.

DOVERE: And so, like, it's very convenient at this point for Netanyahu to say, let's start weaning ourselves off. He has -- through things that he has done and the leadership that he has had, he has made it so that for, again, Republicans and Democrats, both, more so for Democrats certainly at this point, aid to Israel is not what it was -- what it used to be in the American political conversation.

KANNO-YOUNGS: Yes, it's not just one party at this point, right? It's becoming increasingly sort of bipartisan in that way. But I do think the skepticism is warranted, particularly that this would happen. Like Israel and Lebanon is still happening right now in terms of that conflict.

CORNISH: Yes. All right. You guys, stay with me. Straight ahead on CNN This Morning, I want to talk about the evacuations from that Hantavirus hit cruise ship. American passengers are going to start arriving in Nebraska for evaluation.

Plus, we're already seeing oil prices surging after President Trump rejected Iran's plan to end the war.

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