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18 People Being Monitored for Hantavirus in U.S.; Trump Speaks as Iran Negotiations Stall Again; Trump: Iran Ceasefire is "on Massive Life Support". Aired 11:30-12p ET

Aired May 11, 2026 - 11:30   ET

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

[11:30:00]

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: We continue our breaking news coverage right now. So, 18 people are in the U.S. after being evacuated from the cruise ship struck by a deadly outbreak of the Hantavirus. Three people have died from the rat-borne virus. And just a short time ago, a French woman became the seventh confirmed case.

At least one American passenger has tested mildly positive for the deadly virus, and another has shown mild symptoms but is still testing negative.

[11:35:00]

Joining us now, Dr. Deborah Birx. She served as the COVID response coordinator in the first Trump administration. Dr. Birx, thanks so much for joining us. The World Health Organization and the U.S. health officials have really strived to diffuse anxiety. Right now, they're emphasizing that this virus is not COVID-19. You are on the front lines of battling the COVID pandemic. Why is this less of a threat?

DR. DEBORAH BIRX, FORMER CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE COORDINATOR FOR THE TRUMP WHITE HOUSE: Well, for several reasons, but I'm really glad that they're starting to molecularly test the patients. This is really important. It's only through seeing the virus through actual testing rather than waiting for symptoms that you can really understand what's going on.

We know that people on this ship are at risk. And I remind people, both the crew and the passengers, and we owe them also testing. But we know that the U.S. and others around the world have done a great job with containment. It is less easy to infect others, we believe, based on the data we've had to date with Hantaviruses. And so, there's not a threat to the general American public, but there is a threat to the people who got off the ship, to the people who are still on the ship, and to the people and to the crew.

BLITZER: This morning, we learned that a French woman who was a passenger on the ship has become the seventh confirmed case. Do you think we'll see more positive test results pop up in the coming days or weeks?

DR. BIRX: Well, as -- you know, the test positives are five to 15 days before you develop symptoms. And so, that's why we should be doing molecular tests. We shouldn't be waiting for symptoms. We learned that in COVID. You know, during the Trump administration, we were doing 2.5 million tests a day, molecular tests. We really know how to do this, and the ship should take on one of those testing machines. They're much smaller. They can test everybody on the ship. They can test everybody who got off the ship so that people can be reassured. If you're test negative, you don't have Hantavirus. If you're test positive, you do have Hantavirus and should be able to take the right supportive care.

BLITZER: Is this Hantavirus behaving as the experts would predict?

DR. BIRX: You know, very good question, Wolf. So, there's actually two different main strains of Hantavirus. The one in North and South America really causes more pulmonary symptoms, and the ones in Asia causes more renal symptoms.

The one in Asia, the South Koreans do have an effective vaccine. They use it in their South Korean military where they have much more exposure to mice and rodents. And so, there is a way to, in the long- term, develop both probably treatment as well as a vaccine. But this particular Hantavirus strain is very similar to the Hantavirus strain that we have in the United States, except that we've been able to show human-to-human transmission with this Andes strain.

BLITZER: Do you have any concerns, Dr. Birx, that this virus could mutate and become more easily transmitted from person to person?

DR. BIRX: You know, that's always a concern with an RNA virus. In other words, these viruses' sole goal in life is to become more adapted to more hosts because they can't live at all without a host. In the most cases, it's the deer rat and the deer mice in the United States, and that's why it's so severe in the Four Corners area. And that's why it's really important to test people and to molecularly test people so that you can really follow this virus over time. We really do need to stop following viruses by symptoms and follow viruses by tests.

BLITZER: Have you been satisfied with the response that you've seen both by the World Health Organization and the U.S. evacuation that has placed the 17 Americans in quarantine in Nebraska right now?

DR. BIRX: It was totally the right thing to do from this administration's standpoint because we needed to test these patients. What I'm disappointed by is as soon as the first case appeared and we had that death, there should have been testing brought on board. We learned that from the Diamond Princess in 2020.

You need to bring tests on board to really test the crew and passengers so you can reassure them these are the individuals who are test positive and these are the individuals that are testing negative. And then you'll learn a lot more about transmission. You'll shorten that incubation period, which I'm sure it's too long, but it's based on subjective analysis of symptoms. And so, we really need as a global coalition to support these passenger ships and really support the crew and the passengers with 21st century testing.

BLITZER: Dr. Deborah Birx, thanks, as usual, for joining us. Appreciate it.

DR. BIRX: Glad to be with you.

BLITZER: And I want to quickly want to go back to the White House. The president is there taking questions from reporters on Iran.

[11:40:00]

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: They intend to give us the nuclear dust, as I call it. It's easier than talking about other terms because it's a term everyone -- but the nuclear dust, which is what we had. They told me, number one, you're getting it, but you're going to have to take it out because the site was so obliterated that there's only one or two countries in the world that could get it. It's so deep and got hit so hard that there's no way they have the equipment to move it. You and China are the only two countries in the world that could take it out. So, we talked about it. They said, you'll have to take it out because we don't have the capability of doing it.

So, for those people that like to say that those great pilots in those great planes. Well, we just ordered 22 more of them. New and improved that those great pilots didn't do their job. They did their job at 1:00 in the morning with no moon, no light, no nothing. Every single bomb hit its targets.

And then, as you know, we shot some incredible things, things that nobody else has. Nobody has a military like we have. We shot the Tomahawks from a submarine 200 miles away. And that went on top of it. But every one of those, including the Tomahawks, every one of those weapons and shots hit perfectly.

And they said to me -- just to put it on the record, they said to me, there are only two countries in the entire world that could ever get that stuff out of there because we don't have the equipment and nobody else. They said China and the United States. So, I just want to let you know those pilots did an unbelievable job, very dangerous job at one o'clock in the morning. Think of it. No, no moon, no nothing. We had no light, purposely. And every single one of those bombs were right down an air chute in a granite mountain that exploded. And they are unable to get it, even if they wanted to. But we're not going to take a chance. So, that's part of the deal.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) agreed to allow the removal of all enriched uranium?

TRUMP: Yes, yes. Well, they did two days ago. They -- OK. They did two days ago. They said, you're going to have to take it. We were going to go with them. But they changed their mind because they didn't put it in the paper. So, when they sent us this document that we waited four days for, that should have taken 10 minutes to do. Look, very simple. We get that. They guarantee no nuclear weapons for a very long period of time and a couple of other minor things, but they just can't get there.

So, they agree with us and then they take it back. But they said to us that it was so badly obliterated. It was the word they actually used. That was my original word. Then it got challenged by some of the fake news. But -- and it wasn't challenged with any knowledge. It was just challenged like they were hoping that this wouldn't have been so successful.

No, it was obliterated. We have the greatest military in the world. They built it largely in my first term, and I didn't know I'd be using it quite this much in my second term. But very simply, when they say, does he have a plan? Yes, I have a plan. The plan is very simple.

In war, you have to change. You have to be flexible. You have a lot of plans, but you have to do different plans in different days. But I have a great plan. But the plan is they cannot have a nuclear weapon. And they didn't say that in their letter.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President, leadership changes that you've talked about in Iran, is this still a leadership that you believe you can negotiate with and ultimately reach a peace deal with?

TRUMP: Yes, I think so. Well, you have two. You have the moderates and you have the lunatics. And I think the moderates are more respected. The lunatics want to fight till the end. It will be a very quick fight. But I call them -- you have -- just like our country, we have lunatics too. I call them lunatics. I call them stupid people too.

But in Iran, they have the moderates that are dying to make a deal, and then you have the lunatics. And I guess they're a little bit afraid of the lunatics. But -- and why not? The level of ferocity for protests. You know, the people are watching it. They want to go out on the streets. They have no weapons. They have no guns. We thought the Kurds were going to give us weapons, but the Kurds disappointed us. The Kurds take, take, take. They have a great reputation in Congress. Congress says, oh, they fight so hard. No, they fight hard when they get paid.

So, I'm very disappointed in the Kurds. But they were given. I said it wasn't going to work, by the way. I just have to say it. I disagreed with what they did. They gave it. I said they'll never get there. And I was right. I like to be right. In this case, too bad.

[11:45:00]

But we sent some guns with ammunition, and they were supposed to be delivered, but they kept it. I said they're going to keep it. But what do I know? I've only been doing this a short period of time. What do I know? Go ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For the time being, the ceasefire remains in place?

TRUMP: What?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For the time being, the ceasefire remains in place?

TRUMP: It's unbelievably weak, I would say. I would call it the weakest right now, after reading that piece of garbage they sent us. I didn't even finish reading it. I said I'm not going to waste my time reading it. I would say it's one of the weakest right now. It's on life support. They understand these are all medical people.

Dr. Oz, life support is not a good thing. Do you agree? I would say the ceasefire is on massive life support, where the doctor walks in and says, sir, your loved one has approximately a 1 percent chance of living. Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President --

TRUMP: Daniel, go ahead. One of the best reporters in Washington.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you, sir. Dr. Oz referenced this a little early. Two questions on health care, if I can. The Council of Economic Advisers released a report saying that the most favored nation drug deals will generate about $529 billion in domestic savings over the next 10 years across all markets. How transformative are these deals?

TRUMP: And makes people better.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, it does.

TRUMP: How transformative are these deals for millions of Americans? And do you believe that the most favored nation drug deals are the Republicans' golden ticket to the midterms?

TRUMP: I think the Republicans should walk away with the midterms. Now, typically, whoever is president, they vote the other way. Nobody knows this. Do we have a psychiatrist in the group? Nobody knows why. Because I think we've had the best president. A lot of people have said, even some radical left lunatics have said that we've had the best presidency, the best first year of any president.

Look, I stopped eight wars, got the largest tax cuts in history, the largest regulation cuts in history. All the things we've done, so many -- Like, all of this that we've done. Medically, we've done so much.

You know, we did a thing called Right to Try at my first, and I could never understand it when I was a civilian, which wasn't so long ago. I haven't been doing it that long, but I always used to marvel at the fact that if they had a great drug and it had to go through the FDA and the FDA guarded it and said, you can't use it, and if a person was terminally ill and the drug was showing great promise, the person is terminally ill, they wouldn't give it to the person because they didn't want to hurt the person.

And I said, well, we need something. And it was very important to me, and I had no idea it would be so hard to get, but we got it in total. We got it in full. It's called Right to Try. That if you're terminally ill, you have the right to try a drug that has not gone even anywhere near final. If it shows even a little promise. And we've saved thousands of lives. It's very hard to get, because the insurance companies didn't want it, the doctors didn't want it, because the doctors didn't want to be blamed. The drug companies didn't want it, because if it didn't work, they didn't want it on their record. So, what we did is we said, we're not going to count it on your record. If somebody's terminally ill and they take the drug and it doesn't work, we're not going to count it on your record. We'll have another record, you know, a little smaller one that not a lot of people look at, but we're not going to count it on your record. So, Right to Try has been one of the great successes. Again, nobody talks about it.

We've saved thousands of lives, Oz. But you know what is maybe even more important? We've learned very quickly that some drugs work and some drugs don't. In other words, some drugs take a person who's terminally ill, and there are numerous cases. And without waiting seven years, 10 years, we -- by the way, we think we've cut it in half, but you do need a period of time. Without waiting many, many years, we know the drug works because we've taken people that were dead. We had a person given the last rites. Gone. The kids are crying. And started them on this drug, and the person became better. It works, you know? And some don't work.

But you learn really fast. It's called the ultimate test, I think, right? You know, they test all these things. They use animals all over the place. They use everything to test. The person's going to die. So, they didn't want it because they didn't want to be sued. You know, the drug companies didn't want to be sued if it didn't work. The country didn't want to be sued.

So, I got everybody into a room, and I said, we're going to do this, but if anybody uses it, they have to sign a document. They signed a very strong document that they're not going to sue the doctor. They're not going to sue the country. They're not going to sue the manufacturer, the pharmaceutical company. They're not going to sue anybody. But we're going to give it a shot.

Right to Try has been so successful. It's been amazing. Nobody talks about it, but everyone knows how successful it is.

DR. MEHMET OZ, MEDICARE AND MEDICAID DIRECTOR: Mr. President, there was a young man that we visited on, actually in Los Angeles, who's taking advantage of this program. Katie actually spoke to him by phone. He's from Alabama. He reached out to you directly, and this is the same program that benefited him.

[11:50:00]

And just to put numbers on the Council of Economic Advisers, it's between, you know, 500 and whatever it was, $30 million that you said, and $700 billion in savings.

So, we estimate it's $600 billion in total savings. And the impact on the American people, Mr. President, is one in three Americans leave a drugstore without their medication because they can't afford it. Even though they've got a doctor's prescription, they know they can make a difference in their lives, that will no longer happen with the most paper-edition drug pricing.

And we're giving drugs like, as you call it, the fat shot, the weight loss drugs to all beneficiaries of Medicare. Every senior in America can get them for $50 starting on July 1st. These are just inconceivably good prices, and they're so good, in fact, that we actually save the taxpayer money by reducing the downstream effects of obesity, diabetes, and hypertension.

Mr. President, all possible because you took brave action. And, again, the question we should be asking ourselves is, why didn't this happen a decade ago? Katie, what do you think about that young man?

SEN. KATIE BRITT (R-AL): Oh, that he is -- he has a new lease on hope, and it's because of you. I talked to his parents, and they said, we feel so good about our country, that we literally have the President, and Dr. Oz, and Secretary Kennedy doing everything possible to give our son a fighting chance. They said before, you know, no one was listening, but you, Mr. President, took action. And Will Roberts, he is such a great young man. He's inspired so many people.

TRUMP: Well, Right to Try is -- nobody talks about this.

BRITT: We're with him.

TRUMP: Thousands of people.

BLITZER: All right. We're going to continue to monitor the President and answering some questions. This was an event originally called for maternal health care, but the Q&A got into Iran. I want to bring in the NATO Supreme Allied Commander - the former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, retired General Wesley Clark, and CNN National Security Analyst Beth Sanner, former Deputy Director of National Intelligence.

And, Beth, thanks so much for joining us. When the President of the United States says the ceasefire with Iran now is on massive life support, what does that say to you?

BETH SANNER, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, he's confronting a decision, right? We are starting to see, I think, you know, here, maybe in some other circumstances like Cuba, the limits of U.S. coercive power. That's what Iran is starting to show us. And so, it puts us at a fork in the road. Do we try more coercive power in order to kind of break this stalemate, or do we kind of continue the blockade?

And so, when he says the ceasefire is on life support, it's a threat to the Iranians, but it's not the first threat. And I, you know, the lunatics in Iran, I don't disagree with him on that, do not look like they are cowering in fear of that.

BLITZER: He says, it's interesting, General Clark, that there are moderates dealing with the United States and Iran right now, but also there are, in his words, lunatics. And it's unclear who has the major hand. What do you say?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK (RET.), FORMER NATO SUPREME ALLIED COMMANDER: Well, I would think that the hardliners that he calls the lunatics have the major hand right now. They've been consistent in what their demands are. This is Iran's big opportunity on the global stage. They see it as a coming out party. They've exercised their control of the Strait of Hormuz. They don't see any effort or any means that the United States is going to break it. They're holding hostage the Gulf states that we promised to protect. And they don't care about their own people.

So, they feel like they're in the driver's seat on this. They want us out of the region, reparations, ownership of the Strait of Hormuz, and, you know, they're ready to move toward a nuclear weapon.

BLITZER: I also want your thoughts, General Clark, on what President Trump just said, that only the United States or China has the capability right now to remove the enriched uranium that was destroyed in the U.S.-Israeli strikes over these past several months. What do you say to that?

CLARK: You know, it's a nice story. It's hard to believe that after the Iranians have built 27 missile cities using all kinds of German excavation equipment to build these under, you know, 1,000 meters of granite, that they can't go back in to the bomb site at Isfahan or Natanz and open it up again. But it seems to me like it's a little bit of flattery on their part of us. Maybe it's true, maybe it isn't, or maybe it's a little deception, because many of us believe that they must have, somewhere else, some second program that has the ability to enrich, that probably is already working on weaponizing a nuclear device.

And so, it's the way countries operate. They simply, we don't believe that they've ever disclosed everything to the International Atomic Energy Agency or the Israelis or us.

BLITZER: Yes, a good point. What do you think?

SANNER: Well, look, the idea of China involving, I mean, I think this is kind of front and center with the president meeting with President Xi starting on Thursday, I don't think that they want to be involved like this.

[11:55:00]

I mean, if you look at it from China's perspective, allowing this to play out, yes, they want this to be over, they wanted this to be over yesterday because they're an export-driven economy. But on the other hand, they're not necessarily going to weigh in and risk that their mediation efforts are going to fail, and they certainly aren't going to, like, put forces in or work with Iran in removing the highly enriched uranium unless there was an agreement to do that.

BLITZER: Trump keeps calling it the nuclear dust.

SANNER: Yes, because uranium oxide is a powder.

BLITZER: Yes. All right. We'll see what happens.

SANNER: So, maybe that's why.

BLITZER: Beth Sanner, thank you very much. General Wesley Clark, as usual, thanks to you as well. And to our viewers, thanks very much for joining us this morning. Inside Politics with our friend and colleague Dana Bash starts right after a quick break.

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