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Trump On War In Iran: "We Are Substantially Ahead Of Schedule"; Trump Meets With Japanese PM At White House Amid War With Iran; Report: Pentagon Asks For Additional $200B To Support War With Iran; Trump: U.S. "Knew Nothing" About Israel's Attack On Iran Gas Field. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired March 19, 2026 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I think she's going to have to go first before you do. Is that OK?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yeah.

TRUMP: Do you understand? It's very good. I mean it's so nice that we don't have to sit there. No, it's very good. I haven't picked up your language. The next time you come, I'll have your language mastered. All right, go ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The war is almost over. Why is the Pentagon going to ask Congress for an additional $200 billion?

TRUMP: Well, we're asking for a lot of reasons, beyond even what we're talking about in Iran when -- this is a very volatile world. And the military equipment, the power of the -- some of this weaponry is unthinkable. You don't even want to know about it. Oh, you could end this thing in two seconds if you wanted to.

But we are -- we are being very judicious, but we want to do, don't forget, Biden gave away. I rebuilt the military in my first time. Biden gave away so stupidly to Afghanistan, a lot. He didn't want to move it. He was too lazy, too stupid to move it. But it was a very small amount. It was a lot, but it was very small relative to what I purchased and what I bill.

We want to have a good -- we want to have vast amounts of ammunition, which we have right now. We have a lot of ammunition, but it was taken down by giving so much to Ukraine. They gave so much. You know, Biden gave $350 billion worth of cash and military equipment to Ukraine and he didn't rebuild anything.

Fortunately, we have a lot. We have a tremendous -- unlimited supply of what you'd call middle and upper middle armaments and military equipment, munitions, armaments, but munitions in particular. At the high end, we have a lot, but we're preserving it. We don't really need it, but we're building. Our manufacturers of military equipment are building at a level they've never seen before. They've never done before. Pete's in charge of it with all of us, really, but Pete's been very, very strong on it. The general and Pete, myself, the whole group, and Raytheon is building four factories. Lockheed is building five or six factories, and they're building them fast because we had a very tough meeting with them. They were going out and buying back stock for $51 billion in one case. They spent $51 billion buying back stock. Now they're not allowed to do that.

And they are now building a tremendous -- there's never been anything like it. What's taking place right now. So, we're in very good shape, but we want to be in the best shape, the best shape we've ever been in. We were that, you know, when I rebuilt the military, we were in great shape and then Biden blew it. And he didn't do anything, he didn't build, he didn't do anything. And if you listen to the Democrats, they don't even want to have a military.

Now, you see how important it is. But we have the strongest military in the world. We have the best equipment we make, by far the best equipment. The other night, they had 114 rockets shot at a certain location, and out of 100 highly sophisticated rockets, out of 114 sophisticated rockets, every single one of them was shot down with our equipment. All our equipment. It's amazing, actually, how good it is. So, we want to be sure and it's a small price to pay to make sure that we stay tippy top.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you, Mr. President, the treasury secretary this morning said there were defections among the Iranian leadership. Are you aware of that? And is there anybody the U.S. can work with as a leader going forward?

TRUMP: Well, we have a man named the treasury secretary here, so maybe, maybe he wants to discuss it. Does anybody know? Do you know who he is? central casting.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, we are seeing the defections at all levels as they're starting to sense what's going on with the regime. It doesn't get reported here in the U.S. very well, but you know, we are trouncing them from the air, and the regime will probably collapse within itself. At treasury, we've seen where they've wired their money out of the country. We're coming for that. We're going to get it back to the Iranian people.

TRUMP: Do you think defections?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On Israel --

TRUMP: There's a lot of military defections also. We have a lot of military defections in Iran. I don't take -- I don't blame them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you, Mr. President. You talked to Prime Minister Netanyahu about attacking the oil and gas fields?

TRUMP: Yeah, I did. I did. I told him, don't do that. And he won't do that. We didn't discuss. You know, we do -- we're independent. We get along great. It's coordinated. But on occasion, he'll do something, and if I don't like it, and so we're not doing that anymore.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And the last one, the Fed chairman, told yesterday that he plans to stay until a new Fed chairman is confirmed. He also plans to stay on the board until the investigation of the Federal Reserve is done.

[12:05:00]

TRUMP: Well, he's under investigation because he's building a building for hundreds of billions of dollars more than it's supposed to cost. The building you see over there is under budget and ahead of schedule. That's the ballroom. The ballroom is a much bigger building. It's a much more complex building than what he's doing and it's at a fraction of the cost. Something is going on, whether it's contractors, that's what I do best in the world. I build. I build great buildings. I've always done it, and I build them under budget and ahead of schedule.

They could have 4 billion -- this is a renovation job for $4 billion. And if you look at the building, it's not even -- I don't know if Kevin was ever going to be able to move into it. It's been under construction for years. It's the most expensive building ever built. Now, I know it's gross incompetent because I happen to think he's grossly incompetent today, certainly you should be lowering interest rates. All right.

Certainly, who would not lower him? But he's stubborn, and he's got Trump derangement syndrome, but a lot of people have that. You know, it's not a curable disease, but he's also building -- he should be lowering rates immediately, but he won't do that because he's a stubborn incompetent person and that's a bad thing. You know, when you're stubborn and incompetent, I think it's the worst combination.

And he's also not a smart person, but he's building a complex over there that's under his jurisdiction. He started it, and it's out of control. It's billions of dollars for a little building. I could have done that building and made it beautiful for $25 million. 25 million and it would have been beautiful.

Look what I've done at the White House, fixing it up. And I mean, the place was in bad shape. You see the floors and everything, it was in bad shape. I could have -- I could have made that building beautiful for $25 million. They're spending $4 billion, all right. So, it's -- there is criminality, maybe it's with the contractor, but because I know more about contractors than any human being, maybe that's ever lived, but that contractor is a very rich man.

Whoever the contractor is that we know, but whoever the contractor is, is an extremely rich man. He's going to make -- could make billions of dollars. I don't -- I'm hearing numbers from three to $4 billion that would make it the most expensive building on a square foot basis ever built in history. And you're not even building a building. It's a renovation. The exterior skin is staying, the steel is staying, the structure.

So, all I want to do is bring out to the public that this guy is an incompetent. He's a very incompetent guy and he may be a dishonest guy, but somebody is dishonest because there's no way that building can be three to $4 billion.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you. Mr. President, you just mentioned Japan.

TRUMP: This looks like one of your people right here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you.

TRUMP: Is he good or bad? Is he a good reporter or bad? As you know? All right, it looks like a Nascar. Go ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President, you just mentioned Japan is stepping up. What kind of this happens? Do you expect from Japan in the future?

TRUMP: Look, I expect Japan to step up because, you know, we have that kind of relationship, and we step up with Japan. We have 45,000 soldiers in Japan. We have -- we spend a lot of money on Japan. So, and we've had that kind of a relationship, so I expect, I'm not surprised, that they would step up. We don't need much. We don't need anything. I mean, honestly, we don't need anything from Japan or from anyone else. But I think it's appropriate that people step up.

In the case of Japan, I hear they get more than 90 percent of their oil through the Strait, so that's a big reason to step up. I mean, we've demolished, that country is close to demolish. The only thing is the Strait. It's very hard. You could take two people, and they could drop little bombs in the water, and they're holding things up. We don't want that to happen.

But honestly, Japan, China, Europe, parts of Europe get a lot of their oil through the Strait. We get none, practically. We're less -- we're less than 1 percent. We don't have to be any percent. We don't even -- I think we do it just to be nice, but we think of it. We don't use the Strait. We're defending the Strait for everybody else. And then in the case of NATO, they don't want to help us defend the Strait and they're the ones that need it.

[12:10:00]

But now they're getting much nicer, because they're seeing my attitude. They're getting much nicer, but it's -- as far as I'm concerned, it's too late. You know, U.K. wants to send aircraft carriers now. And I said, I want the aircraft carriers before the war. I don't want them after the war is won. They want to send me aircraft carriers after the war -- there's practically nobody to shoot at him. You know, their missile count is down. Pete, maybe you could discuss it by about 90-something percent. The drones are way down and the factories are being demolished.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:

Sir, our missile -- missiles being shot, are down over 90 percent since the beginning. One way attack. Drones down 90 percent since the beginning, which is a reflection of overwhelming firepower. But you mentioned the most important part, Mr. President, their defense industrial base. If you can't make more of it in the future, then you have a limited supply, and so we're going after all of their defense contractors that make all of their exquisite weapons and ensuring that even if they wanted to rebuild more launchers or more missiles, they couldn't in the future. And that's a level of devastation for their military that they've never seen before.

TRUMP: So, we have in literally two weeks, we've demolished their navy, their air force, all technology is gone, all communication is gone, and all of the leaders are gone. Other than that, they're doing quite well. OK. How about one more question for the prime minister. Let me pick a beautiful looking person from a -- beautiful person from Japan, a question for the prime minister. Go ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Of course, you know, Japan and U.S. are very good friend. But one question, why didn't you tell U.S. allies in Europe and Asia, like Japan, about the war before attacking Iran? So, we are very confused about we Japanese citizens.

TRUMP: Well, one thing you don't want to signal too much. You know, when we go in, we went in very hard and we didn't tell anybody about it because we wanted surprise. Who knows better about surprise in Japan, OK, why didn't you tell me about Pearl Harbor? OK, right? He's escaping. Don't you believe in surprise? I think much more so than us. And we had a surprise and we did. And because of that surprise, we knocked out -- the first two days, we probably knocked out 50 percent of what we and much more than we anticipated doing.

So, if I go and tell everybody about it, there's no longer a surprise, right? OK, one more. One more. One more for the prime minister. You get it for the prime minister?

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. Thank you very much. Japan's UJ Press (Ph), Japan's biggest concern is China. Now they're giving us export control and very harsh terms to criticize us. So, could you plan (inaudible) to bring out relationship between Japan and China, while you're there?

TRUMP: Well, I'll be going to China very quickly, but the -- I think I'd really like to have the prime minister talk about China, because I know they have a little bit of an edgy relationship, and I'd just like to know where it stands. How you doing with China? So please.

SANAE TAKAICHI, JAPANESE PRIME MINISTER: (Foreign Language)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, first of all, Japan has been consistently open to dialog with China. And also, second, we have been addressing our relations with China in a calm manner. And also speaking of the U.S., China relationship, my sincere hope is that the relationship will be something conducive for regional security and also ensuring the global supply chain in the world. Once again, I would like to reiterate that Japan has been consistently open to dialog with China.

TRUMP: And I think we're going to have a great trip. The trip has been postponed for about a month and a half. It's been reset and we look forward to it. And I'll be -- I'll be speaking Japan's praises when I'm in China with President Xi. But we have -- but we're going to have some good talks today and I think mostly about trade because they want to do a lot of trade. They're a tremendous purchaser of our energy, our oil gas from, in particular, Alaska, because Alaska, believe it or not, is very close. It's much closer than any other source. It's just -- it seems a little cold compared to, but it's just a short trip -- it's just a short trip.

[12:15:00]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So that's something that we will talk after the (inaudible)

TRUMP: We'll be discussing trade and a lot of the talk will be about energy. Thank you very much, everybody.

(CROSSTALK)

DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: You've been watching a meeting with President Trump and the Japanese prime minister. I'm Dana Bash. Welcome to Inside Politics.

This was an interesting conversation that we expected to focus and maybe it will focus in private a lot on the economic impact that this war is having across the region and it is especially hitting Japan very, very hard, because Japan relies heavily on getting oil and gas from the Middle East. It was supposed to also focus on, initially, on unity, on the cherry blossoms, which are going to come out here soon in Washington.

But what I want to talk about now is actually what was happening on Capitol Hill as this was going on. Jeff Zeleny, which is both the House speaker and -- in the House side, obviously, and the Senate Majority Leader, John Thune, both were very non-committal on the question of whether they could get the votes for what the president is clearly going to ask for, which is a big chunk of change, perhaps as much as $200 million -- billion dollars to go for funding more of this war.

And I'll just tell you what John Thune said specifically to our colleague, Ted Barrett. I think they're going to have to show us how they want to use it.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: I mean, that makes clear a couple things. One, it seemed to be a number that that the Washington Post first reported that was also news to the speaker and the Senate majority leader. So clearly, the work had not been done to pave the way for this, but it is going to make one thing clear. Yes, there has not been a congressional vote to authorize this war, but paying for the funding effectively will be that.

There is going to be a war debate over the funding. So, Senate Majority Leader, John Thune, he said that they're going to have to show it, but also, they're going to specifically have to go through why the war was necessary now, what the objectives are going forward. So, this is really going to be the true test of MAGA and President Trump's ability to persuade people, because several House members, Lauren Boebert and others are telling our colleagues on Capitol Hill that they are not going to vote to authorize any more money.

So that means that Democrats will have to join some skeptical Republicans in this. So anytime this happens, we've covered war funding debates for many years. It is always a bipartisan effort, and it is a contentious one, and there is going to be effectively a war authorization vote through this spending cut.

BASH: Yeah. And it's going to be interesting to see how much Democrats want to play ball on this, as opposed to in years past, in conflicts passed. Let's just play a little bit of Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, this morning, when asked about the $200 billion that was reported.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY: $200 billion, I think that number could move. Obviously, it takes -- it takes money to kill bad guys. So, we're going back to Congress and folks there to ensure that we're properly funded for what's been done, for what we may have to do in the future.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: So, it takes money to kill the bad guys. And Liz, I want to bring you in in one second, but I do quickly want to play what Senator Lisa Murkowski from Alaska said this morning about this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LISA MURKOWSKI (R-AK): The people in Alaska are asking me, how long is this going on? Are there going to be boots on the ground? How much is this going to cost? What -- to what extent is the Congress engaged in this? And the answer on most of this is, I don't know. The administration is going to have to walk us through, whether it's 200 billion or some other iteration of what the supplemental will be.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Liz Goodwin, and by the way, welcome to Inside Politics.

LIZ GOODWIN, NATIONAL POLITICS REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: Thank you.

BASH: What's your reporting on this debate?

GOODWIN: Yeah. So, Republicans have been pretty wary about the rise in gas prices that we've already seen as the conflict keeps dragging on now into its third week. And I think what we're seeing here is there's a push back on the idea of what is the strategy. If you're asking for $200 billion, that sounds like a very long effort. That's a lot of money.

[12:20:00]

So, there's a desire to hear an end game. There's a desire to hear, you know, how do you get out of the situation where the Strait is closed? There's frustration that senators have even said out loud now, Republican senators about, they don't feel as if the administration was prepared for the energy repercussions that they unleashed by starting this war. And I think that's what they're demanding to see before they give this a blank check.

BASH: And you just heard the president talking about that, insisting that he actually thought that it could be worse that he was very much prepared for the energy repercussions. I mean, it's unclear if that -- if that is the case and how you define worse because it's getting harder and harder, not just for the U.S. and maybe the least for the U.S. because the U.S. is now much more energy independent than in the past. But for other countries around the world, especially as I mentioned, Japan, who is represented by the prime minister there today.

I want to touch on another topic that has been hotly debated over the last 12 hours or so. And that is the issue of Israel bombing some of the Iranian oil fields. The president early this morning putting out something on Truth Social saying, you know, stop. I don't support that. And he reiterated it here.

Now the question that we were all kind of hoping would be asked was whether or not the president knew about it ahead of time, which is what the reporting is from some of our colleagues, and also Barak Ravid at Axios. That we didn't get a question on, so we don't have an answer on officially from the president.

JASMINE WRIGHT, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, NOTUS: Yeah. And I really wish we did have an answer to that. The president likely, perhaps, would have reiterated what he said on Truth Social, which is that he didn't know about it, but he asked Israel to stop. He said today that he had asked Israel to stop.

I mean, I just think, if you take a step back over the course of the last two plus weeks. What I've heard from White House officials is that the president and Benjamin Netanyahu are in extremely close coordination, talking every other day, perhaps every day. The folks beneath them on the administration level are also talking and coordinating. They may have perhaps different objectives, as we heard some folks speak to today, but they're still incredibly close coordination.

So, I think for a lot of people who are following this day in and day out, it raises a lot of questions for the president to say that I didn't know that they were going to strike Iranian oil -- Iranian oil fields just because of that close coordination. And so, I think the president is going to have to answer for that question.

But of course, there are a lot of other red flags as to. If this conflict were to widen and actually hit those energy sources, something that the president is now threatening for Iran not to do. What does that mean for these prices that they're already concerned about, even if they're not saying as much publicly?

BASH: Yeah. And also happening this morning. It's a very busy morning here in Washington. Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, is on Capitol Hill doing another hearing on the House side, this time about the threat assessments to the U.S. And she said a couple of times that the Israeli government and the U.S. government don't necessarily have. I'm paraphrasing the same objectives in this war. I'm glad you said to pull back because we've been talking about a lot of specific things, because so much is moving and changing minute by minute.

But Jeff, I just want to talk about something that our friend and colleague David Chalian mentioned this morning, which is to really pull back the aperture and open the aperture about where we are right now, and most importantly, where the president is right now. Because he was talking about -- asked about whether more troops are going to go in.

He claimed, no. He's dealing with whether or not and how to get Congress, a reluctant Congress, to spend a lot more money on this war. And just as we're talking there's more evidence that there's some issues with the economy which matters so much, and that is that mortgage rates just jump to the highest level in more than three months.

ZELENY: Look, so much is now stacking up that it really -- when you go back to the very first hours and days of the strikes on Iran, when the president, of course, he's been all over the board on this that compared to Venezuela. It makes it clear how different in every way this is, economically, historically, militarily. So, this is something that is now a challenge that really are mounting for this White House, politically and militarily. So, it's unclear. The president clearly does not want a long war. We've heard him talk about that forever. It's not his choice, necessarily.

[12:25:00]

Now, asking for that $200 billion, I think, is the most telling sign that this is going to be the soundtrack of the midterm election campaign. This is going to be front and center in everything politically and militarily, the objectives are still a little bit unclear. I mean, the president said he's not going to send more troops in, but there are 5000 marines enroute there now. So, some experts are saying that they could be used to sort of reopen the Strait of Hormuz. That is also an incredibly fraught matter.

BASH: Very fraught. OK, everybody standby. Up next. Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin is one step closer to taking the reins at the Department of Homeland Security. Thanks to a Senate Democrat and despite the fact that the party's chairman of this oversight committee voted no. Will explain all the drama, next.

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