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Inside Politics

Trump: Iran Agreement Is "All Signed"; Trump Backs Rep. Mike Collins In Georgia Senate Primary; U.K. Announces Sweeping Social Media Ban For Children Under 16. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired June 15, 2026 - 12:30   ET

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

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[12:30:06]

MANU RAJU, CNN ANCHOR: President Trump began his trip to France for the G7 summit on a high with French President Emmanuel Macron, saying an agreement with Iran is, quote, "all signed" and that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. And that's after an evening of highs for the President, his 80th birthday, a UFC fight at the White House, and his crude oil prices plunge and stocks surge. But will it last? And how will his own party respond to all of this?

I've got an excellent group of reporters to break this all down, including Kristen Holmes, who covers the White House. I mean, the President has been obviously hearing about feeling the pain, the political pain. He's seen the polls, he's seen the gas prices skyrocket during the last two months or so of this war. Just to look on your screen how much before the war, it was $2.98 per gallon. Today, it's $4.07, which is still obviously very high, but it's much less than it was, say, a few weeks ago.

So, is this what's motivating the President more than anything here? He is -- you know, he got criticism for saying, I'm not thinking about Americans, the affordability concerns of Americans as I'm trying to get a deal with Iran. But he clearly is hearing these concerns from his own party.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And I would say that I talked to a senior administration official just two days ago about this. And the consensus is that any spiraling that President Trump has been doing is all based in what we've seen happening in Iran.

The inability to get a deal, the fact that he felt backed into a corner, that President Trump himself will never admit that he made a mistake by going to Iran, even to his closest advisers. But that he is seeing the numbers, he is seeing the economy, he is seeing this all as part of his lasting legacy.

It's not just about the midterms, it's also about what is he going to be remembered for, which is so much of what he's doing now. And, in part, that does play into the midterms. Because if it is a complete wipeout for Republicans, it's going to be harder for his agenda, and it's going to reflect on the President, even though he's not on the ballot. So I would say that Iran has really been the driving factor for so many of the decisions we've seen him make lately (ph).

RAJU: And you see -- you know, within his own party, there's this divide. There are these members who say, just get a deal. We just want this to be done. Let's move on. We got to focus on affordability, the economy. This is killing our party.

And then there are the folks who have been the hawks in their party, who have been -- want something real, want something tangible, want something more than just a commitment that Iran may or may not live up to. One of them is Senator Lindsey Graham, who said, "Under our law, any nuclear deal with Iran will be sent to Congress for review and a vote. I look forward to reviewing the final product and I believe it is imperative that the architect of the deal, Vice President Vance and his negotiating partners, be part of the process of presenting the final deal to Congress."

He wants a vote. Is he going to get that vote? And what do you make of that?

JOHN BRESNAHAN, CO-FOUNDER, PUNCHBOWL NEWS: They will get a vote. There is a 2015 law, the Iran Nuclear Review Act --

RAJU: Which McConnell engineered.

BRESNAHAN: Which McConnell engineered. They'll get a vote on this. If they change anything new with sanctions, if they change anything to do with -- anything nuclear agreement, the Iran's nuclear program, they will -- or terror, the Iran support for terror, they have to get a vote. That triggers that.

And they will get a vote on this in both houses of Congress, which is the important part here too. And it's -- they can put a resolution of disapproval. They can signal their -- whether they disapprove of the agreement, that we're not sure whether that's constitutional or not. But this will be -- this is not going away.

Just because what Trump said today, the next couple of months will be about it. They'll be -- they'll conduct these nuclear talks. We'll see how much leaks out of that. You know, Trump is already threatening to, you know, to retaliate against Iran if they don't stay there.

But his language is fascinating to me. I just -- you know, it's a -- we get along very well with Iran. It's a new set of -- it's a different set of leaders. Yes, because he killed the --

RAJU: It's the same family.

BRESNAHAN: Yes, it's the same family. It's his father who was killed, Ali Khamenei. So I just think this is a long way to go on.

RAJU: Yes, I mean, look, it took years for the Obama nuclear deal to be agreed to. They want to do all these complicated issues in a couple of months. And the big question is going to be, is this any different ultimately than the deal that Obama cut that Trump tore up? SEUNG MIN KIM, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I already have -- you know, people in the conservative circles who are very -- who are major hawks when it comes to Iran are telling me just the lead up to -- if you compare what we're getting now compared to the lead up to the 2015 deal, they say this is -- they say it's just -- this is something that you can't really support.

And I was really fascinated by Lindsey Graham's, particularly naming Vice President Vance there. And I'm told that a lot of that is because there's a lot of deep skepticism on Capitol Hill that this is actually going to happen, that there will be a nuclear agreement after 60 days. That if -- even if there is an agreement, that will be enough for -- enough -- that will be enough for -- enough members of his party to support.

[12:35:15]

So they're making Vance the fall guy here. Obviously, Lindsey Graham has a good relationship with the President. He wants to maintain that relationship with the President. And Vance and Graham, very different, you know, philosophies when it comes to foreign policy. So they're happy to make Vance the face of the deal here --

RAJU: Yes.

KIM: -- because they're skeptical about it.

RAJU: And Vance was a skeptic of the Iran war, has to embrace it because of the position he's in. But look, if he runs in 2028, which he most likely will, this could -- if it doesn't go well, he's going to be remembered for this deal.

HOLMES: It's going to hang over him. I mean, I think either way it's going to hang over him. I mean, they have clearly put him front and center now. We just heard from U.S. -- senior U.S. officials saying that President Trump asked JD Vance to take a more senior role, to take control of the narrative on all of these, that he was getting involved in these negotiations at the request of President Trump.

I do think also part of this is that President Trump is done. He's been done. He is so over Iran, you know, he wants to move on to anything else. So the idea is that somebody has to take the lead on this. Why not be --

RAJU: Yes.

HOLMES: -- Vice President JD Vance? Because he doesn't want to deal with it anymore.

RAJU: And as we go to break, the President's meeting with all these G7 leaders, he said some not so nice things about them over the years and months, whether it's about Mark Carney, whether it's about Keir Starmer, Macron himself, who he just met with, said -- he said, "I called up France, Macron, whose wife treats him extremely badly." That's one of the things that he said calling up the chancellor of Germany as well. So a little bit -- a little awkward, perhaps. KIM: He had awkward moments or these outright battles with every single one of the other G7 leaders, which is why all of these interactions in the next couple of days will be really interesting to watch.

RAJU: I guess they will be. I guess they will be.

All right, coming up for us, who has more sway with Georgia Republicans? President Trump or Governor Kemp? Tomorrow's runoff election tests that question and determines who takes on Senator Jon Ossoff in November.

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RAJU: Tomorrow, Georgia Republicans will decide who will take on Senator Jon Ossoff in November. It's likely to be one of the most expensive Senate races ever. And in the final hours of the primary runoff, President Trump is getting involved. With the middle of the night Truth Social post over the weekend, he backed Congressman Mike Collins.

And that sets up a proxy battle between the President and Governor Brian Kemp, who has thrown his support behind football coach Derek Dooley. Now, the Trump-Kemp relationship is, of course, very fraught. Going back to the President's false claims about widespread election fraud in Georgia in 2020.

And today, Kemp reacted to their competing endorsements.

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GOV. BRIAN KEMP (R), GEORGIA: I was very clear with the President of why I thought we needed a political outsider in this race. And the best political outsider was Derek Dooley to beat Jon Ossoff. You know, obviously, he disagreed with that. And the voters are going to weigh in tomorrow to settle that score.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: All right, so who wins this race between Trump and Kemp? This is just the view of the two men, according to among likely GOP Georgia primary voters in the AJC poll. 55 percent view Kemp favorably. That's good numbers. Trump is better, 60 percent. More view Trump, have a stronger disapproval of Trump, about three times as much but still only 12 percent. Kemp just 4 percent.

But Kemp has a pretty serious political operation in Georgia. So -- but is Trump weighing in here because he sees the polls and looks like Collins is going to win?

BRESNAHAN: Yes. And the polling we've seen in Georgia shows Collins beating him. So I do think Collins goes into tomorrow with the upper hand here. He's got Trump. Trump has a good track record on this stuff. Look what he's done this year in primaries. He's pretty good. I mean, he's lost a couple, but he's the big ones, he's won. And this is one of the big ones. I mean, this is -- like if the Republicans can't knock off Ossoff here, which it doesn't feel like it right now, I mean, we're only in June, but it doesn't feel like it right now. Then they've got to look for other places to either pick up a seat or hold off Democrats.

And --

RAJU: Yes.

BRESNAHAN: -- this one is going to be a mega battle. But I -- it feels right now like Collins is going to win.

RAJU: And this was, you know, this is --

BRESNAHAN: Yes.

RAJU: You know, he -- Ossoff is the one Democrat in a state that Donald Trump won in 2024. And he is looking more formidable now than ever before, in large part because he has a massive war chest. So it's a bit of a risk for Trump to jump in so late and back Collins. Let's just say Collins wins a primary and loses the general. People will say, oh, Trump's pick lost.

HOLMES: Yes, but I think we're looking at too far ahead. There'll be another million reasons that President Trump can say that, you know, Collins lost. That has nothing to do with him because that's so far away from when the endorsement actually happened.

I would just go back to the idea that, like, there is no way that President Trump would weigh in on this race if he was not briefed on every single poll. There has been one mistake, which was Randy Feenstra.

BRESNAHAN: Yes.

HOLMES: He was not happy about that in Iowa. He was not going to weigh in on a race afterwards if he had not been fully briefed, seen every single poll. They don't want him out there losing. That is -- that with everything else going on is embarrassing to President Trump. And that's --

RAJU: Yes. Especially with a big race like this.

[12:45:03]

HOLMES: Exactly. So we can -- the general is so far from now, this is all about what he saw and what he was told was going to happen tomorrow. And that is why he got behind him.

RAJU: And the thing about that 12:56 a.m. Truth Social post, he included in there something that Derek Dooley said, which was the truth behind closed doors, that Trump had lost in 2020 Georgia. He lost Georgia in 2020. There was a report in the Washington Examiner about it.

Obviously that's still on Trump's mind because he said that, Dooley said that, quote, "I lost Georgia in 2020 when in actuality, the facts have now proven that I won by a lot." He's citing that in his endorsement post of Collins.

KIM: That has become such a litmus test for President Trump and for the Republican Party in the Trump era, whether it's, you know, political nominees that the President weighs in on, whether it's, you know, judicial nominees. It is just such a -- that is such a deal breaker for the President.

I mean, going back to the Texas endorsement of Paxton over Cornyn, we know that one of the reasons why -- one of the big reasons why the President vote or weighed in on favor of Ken Paxton is he was a loyalist through and through and really carried those election fraud claims. Whereas, Cornyn was, you know, out -- you know, skeptical and critical of what the President done in 2020, but also in 2021 after the insurrection at the Capitol.

So, again, like as Kristen says, this is all about the primary. We've seen where the President's primary picks have gotten the Republican Party in trouble in the past in the general, but right now the President wants to keep, you know, kind of revive a streak --

RAJU: Yes.

KIM: -- that had been broken by that endorsement in Iowa.

RAJU: Yes, just like in Texas, he got behind Paxton when the polls made it very -- look, like Paxton was going to win and ultimately Paxton won by a lot. This is what Jon Ossoff said to me when I asked him about this primary Dooley versus Collins.

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RAJU: What are you expecting on Tuesday out of this runoff? What are you looking for, specifically from your eventual opponents?

SEN. JON OSSOFF (D), GEORGIA: I don't know who will win, but I can tell you this. This runoff has forced both of my Trump puppet opponents to align themselves with President Trump in ways that make them terminally inseparable from the catastrophically unpopular and incompetent president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: And this is why this is interesting. This is a purple state Trump carried in 2024. Also, if it's trying to tie his opponents to Trump, just as his opponents are trying to run with Trump, they both are making the same calculation. The question is who's going to be the right person making that calculation.

BRESNAHAN: He's leaning in very hard there in that quote. He's been leaning in very hard on the stump down there. Trump, he's -- we've talked about this before. Trump's poll numbers have collapsed on the economy, especially during the Iran war. And he's banking on that he can run against Trump. This is a --

RAJU: Yes.

BRESNAHAN: That's a really big risk here.

RAJU: Yes.

BRESNAHAN: But like you said, he's got a ton of money. He's got organization. He's got the lead right now. Also, Collins has a lot of -- there's going to be a lot. If Collins is the nominee, there's going to be a lot of stuff that he can go after on Collins.

RAJU: Yes.

BRESNAHAN: Collins is --

RAJU: That makes investigation.

BRESNAHAN: Yes. And he said a lot of --

KIM: And just his Twitter feed.

BRESNAHAN: Yes, I mean, he is pretty hard right. And, look --

TAPPER: Which is why Trump likes him, so.

BRESNAHAN: Yes, exactly.

RAJU: Yes, yes.

BRESNAHAN: But can he make it in the general as Seung Min --

RAJU: Yes. We'll see. Big, big race.

All right, coming up, the U.K. is pushing to ban social media for anyone under 16. Could it happen on this side of the Atlantic?

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[12:53:04]

RAJU: The United Kingdom is trying to log off an entire generation. Prime Minister Keir Starmer is pushing for a ban on social media for children under the age of 16. And that includes TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Facebook, and X.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KEIR STARMER, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: This is not something I do lightly. And I will not present it as cost free, as if social media has brought no benefits to young people. Because clearly, that is wrong. But government is always about choices. And it's clear to me that a full ban is the right choice.

(END VIDEO CLIP) RAJU: And the plan still needs Parliament's approval, but it's reigniting a debate in Washington that they have dodged here for many, many years.

My excellent panel is here. So how does a ban like this work? I mean, they try -- Australia, it did happen in Australia, but there are ways around it. And enforcing it is really the challenge here.

KIM: Really enforces challenge. And there are -- there is a bipartisan group of senators that have tried to look at the issue. Basically, it would ban social media for kids under the age of 13, ban promoting social media for kids under the age of 17. And it's really notable that it's been pushed by senators who either have teenage children or children who are recently teenage children.

So people like Katie Britt, Ted Cruz, Chris Murphy, and Brian Schatz. You know, there is legislation that passed Senate Commerce Committee last year, but obviously has not, you know, moved to the full Senate floor, has signed into law. And it's a really difficult proposition because you see the impact of social media, especially on young adults, on teenagers, which is the impetus for why these senators are working.

But you know how influential and massive the tech industry is --

RAJU: Absolutely.

KIM: -- here in Washington. And that may explain a lot of the lack of movement there.

RAJU: And this is the map of where these bans have actually passed. They've been in effect. You mentioned Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, and then there's several other countries you can see on your screen there where they've been proposed or they're under discussion everywhere from Canada to Turkey to Poland and the like.

[12:55:07]

But here in the United States, you've got a First Amendment issue and courts have repeatedly struck down laws restricting what minors can see online.

HOLMES: I don't think that there's a likelihood that we're going to see some kind of all-out ban. However, I do think in the next couple of years, we're going to see some kind of issue where they're helping children work with technology. And I think the tech companies are going to have to get on --

RAJU: Yes.

HOLMES: -- get involved because it's just becoming really hard for families. And as you said, like, there are more and more people with teenagers who want to see an answer on this.

RAJU: Yes, and we've seen, you know, the Kids Online Safety Act as one bill here. It imposes safeguards. It doesn't go as far as a ban, and they still have not been able to get that through Congress.

BRESNAHAN: Remember when it came through the Energy and Commerce Committee, a key House committee, 50 to nothing, and it didn't even get a vote on the House floor.

RAJU: Yes.

BRESNAHAN: These companies are so powerful in Washington. And we've had the Senate Judiciary Committee, House Judiciary Committee have passed bills. The Senate actually passed the Blackburn-Blumenthal bill, and it didn't go anywhere.

Now, they're trying to revive it again for this fall. I don't know if it will go anywhere, there'll never -- but there'll never be a ban. It'll never happen here, you know.

RAJU: Yes. And we'll see if 2028 candidates decide to campaign on this issue.

BRESNAHAN: Yes,

RAJU: That'll be interesting to watch.

Thank you for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts after a very quick break.

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