{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.hagerty.senate.gov/press-releases/2026/04/13/icymi-hagerty-joins-mornings-with-maria-on-fox-business-to-discuss-iran-reconciliation-ai/", "ICYMI\u2014Hagerty Joins\u00a0Mornings with Maria\u00a0on Fox Business to Discuss Iran, Reconciliation, AI", "2026-04-13", "2026", "2026-04", "Republican", "Senate", "TN", "Bill Hagerty", "H000601", "www.hagerty.senate.gov", "hagerty", "https://www.hagerty.senate.gov/press-releases/", "scraper", "WASHINGTON\u2014Today, United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and former U.S. Ambassador to Japan, joined Mornings with Maria on Fox Business to discuss Iran, reconciliation, Federal Reserve leadership, and artificial intelligence.\n\nPartial Transcript\n\nHagerty on Iran and other revisionist nations: \u201cIt\u2019s at least good to see other nations step in and try to offer a hand here. Russia is going to be impacted. The whole world is going to be impacted once the Iranian regime is taken down. This unholy axis that you\u2019ve seen: Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. It\u2019s time for it to break, and I think the Iranians are creating an embarrassing situation for all of them.\u201d\n\nHagerty on President Trump\u2019s negotiating strategy with Iran: \u201cWhat the Iranians are seeing is a very different negotiating style. You remember the last time they sat down and talked about the nuclear arsenal and nuclear ambitions with the US president\u2013 that was under Obama. Their negotiator, the Iranian negotiator, walked out of the room, and John Kerry chased him out of the room. They bent. They broke. The Obama administration broke and gave them everything they wanted in terms of being able to pursue their nuclear ambitions. President Trump has made it clear that he will not do that. The Iranians tried that old play again. It didn\u2019t work this weekend. J.D. Vance stood strong. I think the Iranians are seeing it\u2019s a different play now, and President Trump is doubling back on them and shutting them down, blockading the Iranians, and cutting off all revenue. At this point, I think they\u2019re realizing this is a very different game, and I\u2019ll be anxious to see how J.D.\u2019s latest and final offer is received by the Iranians.\u201d\n\nHagerty on maximum pressure and Iran\u2019s economy: \u201cIt [the maximum pressure campaign] worked last time. We were almost there in the first Trump administration. My job was to get the Japanese government to stop buying Iranian crude oil when I was US Ambassador to Japan. That happened all over the world. And again, John Kerry inserted himself and suggested to the Iranians that they should wait and see what would happen in the 2020 election. Again, Biden comes in, opens up all the spigots, money starts flowing to Iran, and they\u2019re back in the terrorism business. President Trump is not going to allow this. The Iranians need to get the message. And I think after this weekend, Vice President Vance, [United States Special Envoy to the Middle East] Steve Witkoff, and [United States Special Envoy for Peace Missions] Jared Kushner have delivered that message loud and clear.\u201d\n\nHagerty on global support and the Strait of Hormuz: \u201cThese nations need to step up. They\u2019re much more impacted. Japan, South Korea, China, and other parts of the world are far more impacted by what happens in the Strait [of Hormuz] than we are. President Trump is trying to deliver good for the entire world. I think the world needs to step up and support this effort. Iran has always threatened to shut the Strait of Hormuz. This has been their playbook for decades. They\u2019re trying to exercise it now. It\u2019s not going to work.\u201d\n\nHagerty on reconciliation and DHS funding: \u201cThe reconciliation process is already underway. Senator Barrasso and Senator Graham met with the president just recently. Our teams have been working on putting a reconciliation bill into motion when we get to Washington later this evening, and tomorrow will be full on it. And the reconciliation process, as you know, is one that requires no Democrat votes. The Democrats have put us in this situation. They\u2019re not cooperating at any level, maximum resistance. They\u2019ve shut down the Department of Homeland Security, and they\u2019ve indicated that they\u2019re not going to do anything to cooperate with President Trump or the Republicans. So we\u2019re gonna move forward on this endeavor. The reconciliation process has to be tied to the budget. That\u2019s precisely the type of thing that we can use, again, to open the department also to deal with defense and several other items that I hope we\u2019ll be able to address.\u201d\n\nHagerty on timeline for DHS funding: \u201cPresident Trump has found a way to deliver revenues there to keep the department open. But I certainly haven\u2019t seen any indication that the Democrats are going to cooperate yet. Perhaps they\u2019ll change their tune this week. The American public certainly is tired of these sort of antics, but I think we need to continue to move along the direction of a reconciliation bill to do it as quickly as we possibly can. Again, President Trump has set the deadline for the first of June. I\u2019m certainly hopeful that we can do it sooner than that.\u201d\n\nHagerty on Kevin Warsh confirmation: \u201cI certainly don\u2019t know how my colleagues are going to vote. Kevin Warsh has already been a decade ago voted unanimously by the Senate. He has been confirmed before. I think he\u2019s been meeting with senators on both sides of the aisle. I think he will do very well in the voting process with respect to the machinations in the Senate Banking Committee and going through the confirmation process. I believe I\u2019m the only senator who\u2019s actually gone through this confirmation process myself when I was up for US Ambassador to Japan. It\u2019s a complicated process, lots of paperwork. It may get moved a few days here or there, but I\u2019m with Kevin [Warsh]. We need to go ahead and have the hearing, be ready to go. Jay Powell\u2019s term ends on the fifteenth of May. We need to be ready.\u201d\n\nHagerty on the Federal Reserve and economic focus: \u201cI think Kevin [Warsh] is the man for the moment right now. The markets are ready for Kevin. He\u2019s focused on productivity, on making investment a top priority, on private credit here in America, and on credit formation. And again, getting the Fed back to its core business. The basic mission drift that took place over the past years, where they were focused on climate change and DEI activities at the regional banks, and even inclusion or inclusiveness was included in the maximum employment mandate. I think we\u2019ll get back to basics. The Fed will be the engine that it needs to be to support our economic growth.\u201d\n\nHagerty on AI and financial system risks: \u201cI think what we\u2019ve seen is that Secretary Bessent is on it. He\u2019s on target, and he\u2019s making certain, as this new technology evolves, that we\u2019re utilizing it in the most effective way possible if a vulnerability is identified. And again, AI can be utilized to identify vulnerabilities and [mitigate] them as much as it can be used to attack vulnerabilities. I\u2019m very pleased to see that he was on it, that he brought in banking leaders to address it, and they\u2019re staying ahead of it. The last thing I want to see is regulation that would shut down the innovation that AI promises. We need to win in this game. The United States needs to lead in this innovation. And there are often voices in Washington that suggest we should shut it down, that we should stop it. But in that case, who then takes the lead? China. Others. We need to be careful. And I think Secretary Bessent has demonstrated that sort of care.\u201d\n\nHagerty on AI guardrails: \u201cI think having rules of the road in place\u2013guardrails\u2013certainly does make sense. I just don\u2019t want to see them so tight and so overly prescriptive that it kills the industry. We saw this with the stablecoin legislation that I passed, the GENIUS Act. We put in place guardrails, and now that technology is thriving, but it can\u2019t be overly restrictive.\u201d\n\n###", 1, "2026-04-14T05:46:13Z", "2026-04-14T05:48:07Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.hagerty.senate.gov/press-releases/2026/04/13/icymi-hagerty-joins-mornings-with-maria-on-fox-business-to-discuss-iran-reconciliation-ai/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.259013941511512, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}