Trump Delivers Perfect Response To CNN Question About Iranian Leaders: ‘They Didn’t Die Of COVID’

Trump gave a flippant response to CNN anchor Dana Bash when she pressed him on Israel’s attacks against Iran, asking whether he believed Iranian leaders — with whom his administration had been trying to negotiate — had been taken out by the strikes.

Bash shared the details of a phone conversation she had with the president early Friday morning, just hours after the news broke that Israel had launched attacks against Iran, apparently taking out a nuclear facility in addition to killing Hossein Salami, commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

I just spoke with @realDonaldTrump on the phone. The President told me the US supports Israel and called the strikes on Iran last night “a very successful attack.”

“We of course support Israel, obviously and supported it like nobody has ever supported it,” Trump said during our…

— Dana Bash (@DanaBashCNN) June 13, 2025

“I just spoke with @realDonaldTrump on the phone. The President told me the US supports Israel and called the strikes on Iran last night ‘a very successful attack,'” Bash posted, quoting Trump as saying, “We of course support Israel, obviously and supported it like nobody has ever supported it.”

“Iran should have listened to me when I said — you know I gave them, I don’t know if you know but I gave them a 60-day warning and today is day 61,” Trump continued, reiterating his call for Iran to come to the table and work out a deal — a deal that he has repeatedly said cannot include an Iran with a nuclear weapon. “They should now come to the table to make a deal before it’s too late. It will be too late for them.”

“You know the people I was dealing with are dead, the hardliners,” Trump added, prompting Bash to ask whether they’d been killed when Israel attacked.

Trump, she said, responded with sarcasm: “They didn’t die of the flu; they didn’t die of Covid.”

According to the Israeli Defense Forces, the intended targets of the strike were “hideouts of senior operatives in the Iranian military leadership.”