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Trump: Talks To End War Going Well; Iran: No Talks Happening; Trump Suggests Strait Of Hormuz Will Be Run By U.S. And Iran; Beshear Accuses Vance Of "Poverty Tourism," "Hillbilly Hate". Aired 12:30-1p ET
Aired March 23, 2026 - 12:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[12:30:00]
DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: -- compare that statement to President Trump speaking this morning.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We have had very, very strong talks. We'll see where they lead. We have points -- major points of agreement. I would say almost all points of agreement. So they called, I didn't call, they called. They want to make a deal.
And we are very willing to make a deal. It's got to be a good deal. And it's got to be no more wars, no more nuclear weapons.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: Now, stocks did jump with the news of a potential off-ramp. The Dow is now up more than 600 points. Oil prices plunged down about 7 percent right now. So what's happening? Well, lucky for us, we have someone who's been in the room brokering these kinds of deals, Nate Swanson, who served on President Trump's Iran negotiating team last year trying to get a nuclear deal, a new one. He was the director for Iran at the National Security Council from 2022 until this past July.
Thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate it. What do you think is really going on here?
NATE SWANSON, PRESIDENT SR. FELLOW & DIRECTOR, IRAN STRATEGY PROJECT, THE ATLANTIC COUNCIL: It's probably a little bit of both things. Both narratives are right. I think from Iran's perspective -- well, sorry, from the President's perspective, I think he is both probably looking for an off-ramp legitimately, and he also is trying to calm markets. And so by his comments today, you know, he's, you know, achieving both things.
He's showing he's interested in off -- in a deal. And, you know, as you just said, the market's a little better now. Iran has probably got two different motivations. I think on one hand, this is a good time for an off-ramp for them as well. They're probably at their max leverage point here. I think it only kind of goes downhill from here.
But they don't want to see the markets improve without an actual deal. So I think that's probably why you're seeing them, you know, dismissive of reports and trying to downplay it a little bit.
BASH: So you think there are talks going on. What do those talks look like through emissaries, right?
SWANSON: Yes. I don't think there's any direct talks going. And I doubt they're very advanced. I could see a world in where Iran and the U.S. would want something to come of this. I think, you know, what the President was threatening in the last week with his, you know, with his ultimatum and what Iran would say -- said it would do in response, you know, targeting Gulf desalination, would have been a disaster.
So I think there's a strong for both sides --
BASH: Would have been a disaster if the President followed through --
SWANSON: Exactly.
BASH: -- and bombed their --
SWANSON: Their --
BASH: -- electrical grid.
SWANSON: Yes, their civilian energy.
BASH: Yes.
SWANSON: And if Iran responded in kind against the Gulf. So, I mean, that would have been an absolute disaster for markets, for the Iranian people, for Gulf or Gulf allies. So, I mean, there's a good reason to step back and to move away from this. And so, I think that's partially at play. But as you said, there's probably market implications as well.
Do you think, based on your experience, and I just want to say, you not only worked for President Trump until last July. It's fair to say you got loomered --
SWANSON: Yes.
BASH: -- which means that you were not considered MAGA enough to be in there. You're a civil -- a career civil servant. You worked for Republican presidents, including this one the first time around, Democratic presidents, as civil servants do.
So you have a lot of experience, including in this administration with this team that's trying to make a deal, but also planning out ahead of time, you would think, what this would look like, gaming out what this war would look like. Given that, how much gaming out of where we are now and where we're going next went on?
SWANSON: It's hard to say, not being in the room. My expectation and my thought process on this is the President probably thought this would be easy. You know, he had this track record of success, you know, with the June strikes last year on Iran's nuclear program, the Maduro operation, and term one, the Soleimani strikes, where he was able to take these big decisive actions that have virtually no repercussions.
So my assumption here, and what we've heard is that, you know, the administration is expecting a three to four-day war, was they thought this would be fast. But I think that was a significant mystery of where Iran was and how they are perceiving the threat. And so, probably not enough planning.
BASH: And a top priority right now is, of course, reopening the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has strategically used as their form of leverage and retaliation in a big way against not just the U.S., but the entire, really most of the globe. There has been a lot of criticism of the administration that they didn't do enough to prepare specifically for that. I would imagine that you, as part of your job on, like, leading the Iran desk at the National Security Council, gaming out things like this were a big part of what you planned for.
SWANSON: Yes. I mean, Iran has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz for as long as there's been threats against Iran. This is not a new dynamic. What seems to have happened here was, you know, there's a lot of thought went into Iran's missile capacity as it had applied to going after the U.S. in the region and Israel in particular, you know, which is only what happened last June and much less focus on the Strait of Hormuz and like, you know, our closest allies. So that seems to be a mystery.
[12:35:02]
BASH: I know that you believe that Iran is kind of getting to the point where maybe they would accept an end to this war. You wrote an article about this in the Atlantic.
SWANSON: Foreign Affairs.
BASH: Foreign Affairs, thank you. Where you said the following, "He," President Trump, "cannot force surrender on a government that refuses it. Even after the heavy damage to Iran's military, the regime that Khamenei put in place has powerful incentives to pursue continued conflict, and it retains a variety of tools to sustain its war of attrition."
The Strait of Hormuz is one of the things we were talking about. What else do you think that it has up its sleeve?
SWANSON: Well, I mean, just their UAV program, right? I mean, it doesn't take a ton of UAVs. They're very cheap and you can target the Gulf --
BASH: Explain what UAV is.
SWANSON: Oh, drones.
BASH: Yes.
SWANSON: The drones.
BASH: Yes. SWANSON: And so Iran is able to target the -- our Gulf allies very easily with very cheap drones, you know, $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 drones. And it takes, you know, million-dollar interceptors like to shoot these things down. And Iran has, it seems like, a near limitless supply of them.
So, this is a very low-cost war for Iran on that front and very high cost to defend against it. But beyond that, I mean, it's just not a symmetrical war at all. You know, I mean, Iran doesn't need to defeat the U.S. or Israel. It just needs to survive. And that is victory enough for this regime. And so it's just -- we have very different objectives and end games.
BASH: Nate, thank you so much for being here. Learned a lot. Please come back.
SWANSON: Thank you very much.
BASH: Thank you.
Up next, the political stakes for President Trump as the war in Iran begins its fourth week.
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[12:41:17]
BASH: President Trump said on Friday he didn't even want to cease fire with Iran. On Saturday, he threatened to destroy Iran's power plants if it didn't open the Strait of Hormuz. And this he said peace talks are happening, and he's optimistic about making a deal.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We're doing a five-day period. We'll see how that goes. And if it goes well, we're going to end up with settling this. Otherwise, we'll just keep bombing our little hearts. Yes. All I do is deals my whole life. I think this is something that's going to happen. And why wouldn't it happen?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: Iranian officials deny that any dialogue with the U.S. is happening.
My smart panel is back. Tia, I'm just going to go down and our terrific team put together just a little bit of a timeline of what we heard from the President, mostly on a social media platform over the weekend. OK, so starting Friday, he said, "I don't want to do a ceasefire. You don't do a ceasefire when you're literally obliterating the other side." That was at 3:45. 513, "We're getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great military efforts."
Saturday, 6:37 p.m., "The United States has blown Iran off the map. We are weeks ahead of schedule." Then about an hour later, "If Iran doesn't fully open without threat, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various power plants." Then fast forward to this morning at 7:23 a.m., "The United States of America and the country of Iran have had over the last two days very good and productive conversations."
TIA MITCHELL, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION: So I want to start, Dana, by just saying 13 service members and counting have died in this conflict. So we're not just talking about politics, we're not just talking about the inconsistent messaging directly from our President via his social media feed, but we are talking about lives of our service members at stake, which is why it is so problematic.
A, I think that's why a lot of people don't think you should govern via social media and that the President should make policy decisions in a more policy announcements in a more formal way and explain them. This also goes back to the lack of explanation and context for what the President has been saying in -- about Iran, why we're there, what's the end game.
But the final thing I'll say, it's the lack of consistency that, again, our service members who are at home, their families, the taxpayers who are wondering what is my money being used for in Iran and how it's going to benefit me. There was literally flip-flopping at least twice in the messages you just read, Dana.
BASH: Yes. And well, first of all, I'm glad you brought up the 13 service members. That's always important to think about. And it's obviously related to not just the politics, but more importantly, the policy here. And what we have seen, this is very much authentic Donald Trump, is he tries to make policy and use his -- the power, kind of his will, via his social media platform to change the way things are going.
SHELBY TALCOTT, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, SEMAFOR: Yes, and I think that that also what's interesting to remember is with the past conflicts or the past wars, whatever you want to call them, that we've gotten into, right? The operation in Venezuela, the 12-Day War, both of those happened while the U.S. was negotiating, right?
So I think that's also important to remember, is this a question of, is this a head fake by the President? The answer is we truly don't know. And that's how he intends it to be.
BASH: Exactly.
TALCOTT: And so you constantly see from the President these sort of mixed messagings, even not just talking about this Iran war, but when we were talking about Venezuela, when we've been talking about past conflicts.
[12:45:11]
Some people inside the administration will argue that that is intentional, that it is intended to throw people off so that --
BASH: It's a madman theory.
TALCOTT: -- nobody knows what he's going to do. But at the end of the day, when you're looking at all of the data points, I think, you know, we still have a ton of resources in the Middle East.
BASH: Yes.
TALCOTT: There are reports that Marines are still heading there. And so there are reports that even as we're having these apparent negotiations, we're beefing up --
BASH: Yes.
TALCOTT: -- in the Middle East to potentially do something more.
BASH: Yes, the U.S. is. There are Marines and sailors, thousands of them, headed to the region right now. And that begs a question, again, related to what you were talking about, Tia, is ground troops. And that -- I was part of a town hall here at CNN on the Iran war over the weekend.
Mike Waltz, who's the president's ambassador to the U.N., was part of it. And there were lots of questions about ground troops and also how this is related to people at home who are suffering to -- on the economy, trying to make ends meet.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm a waiter at a local restaurant in Queens, a full-time college student who sleeps an average of four hours a night and is still thousands in debt. How is a war in a country half the world away funded by the taxes pulled from my check, helping me in any way?
MIKE WALTZ, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS: Yes, it's -- look, it's a valid and it's a tough question. The President's absolutely focused on what you're seeing day in and day out that's affecting your pocketbook. At the same time, as commander-in-chief, he has to weigh the risks and make the tough decisions facing some hard truths.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAVID CHALIAN, CNN WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF & POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Yes, I mean, it is true for all presidents, right? You have to do lots of important things all at the same time. That's the nature of the job. And I think that's the point the U.N. ambassador was trying to make there.
I don't know that it will make that voter feel any better about his economic experience, but that is a reality. But I think when he -- the President's constant stream of messages, you say madman theory, that's -- but also for the goal of providing himself and his team maximum optionality. But what is clear to me, there are two things crystal clear to me, because it's hard to get clarity through all those messages. When this whole thing started, he set out a timeline of four to six weeks. We're now in week four. And I think it's pretty clear that he is also looking now for a viable off-ramp from this. And that is why leaning into the negotiations the way he did this morning.
TALCOTT: And that's the big problem that the administration has is that off-ramp. Because remember, it's not just the U.S. --
CHALIAN: Exactly.
TALCOTT: -- against Iran, it's also Israel against Iran. And so the U.S. is having to factor in what Israel is doing and how their, for example, munitions are operating and what their -- how their goals differ from the United States goals. And they do differ.
And so you're seeing, when I talk to administration officials, there is some quiet acknowledgement that that is a discussion that has to be had. And that's one of the difficulties in us getting out of this.
BASH: Right. Thanks, everybody. Don't go away, though, David, because we're going to have some raw politics here on Inside Politics.
Fighting words in Ohio. A Democratic presidential, likely hopeful, goes to JD Vance's home state and accused him of hillbilly hate.
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[12:52:59]
BASH: The setting, Butler County, Ohio, home to Vice President JD Vance and one of the most critical Senate races this year. So at the Democrats' spring gala there, perhaps this is exactly what Ohioans expected to hear from the Kentucky Governor, Andy Beshear.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. ANDY BESHEAR (D), KENTUCKY: There is no one who will work harder no matter what I'm doing next year to beat JD Vance in 2028.
His book, "Hillbilly Elegy," was really hillbilly hate. It is poverty tourism because he ain't from Appalachia. Ohio deserved a much better senator than him and we all deserve a much better vice president.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: Vance's press secretary told the New York Times, quote, "Every time Andy Beshear attacks the Vice President to try to get himself publicity, he ends up humiliating himself in the process, but maybe that's something he's into?" question mark.
David Chalian is here still with me. Unpack this.
CHALIAN: Well, this is a refrain from Andy Beshear. He sees this as a lane for himself and a way to get in. First of all, Andy Beshear is very much considering a presidential race in the Democratic Party and -- BASH: Right.
CHALIAN: -- part of what he's going to try to sell and has been selling to Democrats around the country even now is this notion of being from a red state, knowing how to win in a red state, something he thinks the national party could use a little more of. So you go to a red state like Ohio, and part of that appeal has been to try and call out JD Vance's story as something other than as JD Vance presents it.
So this has been sort of part of the Beshear package. Listen, there's some truth to the Vance team's response, right? Like, he clearly is doing this to get publicity. Because one way, when you are the governor of an overwhelmingly pro-Trump state, is to, you know, not focus on Trump as much. And it's another way in to make a criticism of the Trump administration without focusing on someone who's popular in your home state.
[12:55:04]
BASH: Well, and to just go back to the first thing you said, was he's looking for a way in and a lane for a potential/probable 2028 presidential run. So if you're running in the Democratic primary and you have this message and you think that it's probable that JD Vance will be the Republican nominee, this is your appeal to the Democratic electorate.
CHALIAN: Exactly. And so he wants to portray himself in this battle in American politics for authenticity. Andy Beshear is trying to claim what it truly means to be authentically from a place, which he thinks JD Vance sort of did in more Hollywood style version in his book than in reality.
BASH: David, thank you.
CHALIAN: Sure.
BASH: Appreciate it.
Thank you for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts after a quick break.
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