Trump signals new war is coming as he brings it up to CNN reporter 'without being asked'

President Donald Trump changed the topic from his war in Iran to preview a possible invasion of another country during a phone call with CNN's Dana Bash.

The broadcaster phoned in to her colleagues on "CNN News Central" moments after hanging up with the 79-year-old president Friday morning to give an overview of their call, and she said Trump seems to be considering additional military conflicts.

"Broadly speaking, he insists that on a scale of 10, with 10 being the best, he thinks that the war is, I would say, at 12, maybe 15," Bash reported. "He said that the U.S. is doing very well militarily, quote, 'better than anybody could have dreamed.' He said that he rebuilt the military in his first term. He's using it in his second, and then he quickly turned to Cuba. He said, without being asked, Cuba is going to fall pretty soon, by the way, but Cuba is going to fall. They want to make a deal so badly."

"I asked, how so?" she added. "He said, 'They want to make a deal, so I'm going to put [Secretary of State] Marco [Rubio] over there and we'll see how that works, but we're really focused on this one now', meaning Iran. 'We've got plenty of time on Cuba,' just more quickly on, obviously, what's going on with Iran, and you were just talking about this with our colleagues in the region."

The president expressed indifference to rising fuel costs, saying that he believed that was a short-term issue that would soon be alleviated.

"I asked about rising gas prices and he said, that's all right, it will be short term, it will go way down very quickly," Bash reported, "and I said, well, they're pretty high now, and he said, 'No, they're not, they're up a little bit, not much, but it will drop to record lows,' and so I asked, well does this mean that you're going to figure out the Strait of Hormuz soon again, something you were just talking about. He said, quote, 'It's already figured out, we've knocked their navy because, you know, when you knock out the navy they can't do what they wanted to be able to do.' The navy is almost, he said, 'we just hit the 25 mark, can you imagine that? Big ones, 25 ships are down. We're doing very well.'"

"I also asked about the gulf countries being hit, [and] he said, 'They're doing unbelievable and they're fighting,'" Bash added. "'They, meaning Iran, 'made a terrible mistake when they attacked them. The UAE is freezing the assets and they have the assets all of them, and they got hit enough where they were going to freeze them. They're brave people.'"

Trump also reiterated his insistence that he should decide who would be Iran's next leader, Bash said.

"I do want to tell you one other important thing that he discussed with me, and it was about a five-minute discussion, and that is who the next leader of Iran will be," she said. You know, he told our colleague Barak Ravid yesterday that he had, like, three people in mind and that he wants to pick the person."

"I asked him about that," she continued. "I said, how is that going to work, and he said, 'It's going to work very easily. It's going to work like it did in Venezuela, we have a wonderful leader there. She's doing a fantastic job and it's going to work like that,' and I said, okay, but are you okay with having a religious leader again, a different ayatollah, and he said, 'Well, I may be, yeah I mean, it depends on who the person is. I don't mind religious leaders. I deal with a lot of religious leaders and they're fantastic,' and then he went on to say, 'I'm saying there has to be a leader that's going to be fair and just do a great job, treat the United States and Israel well and treat other countries in the Middle East, they're all our partners.'"

"So that was the gist of our discussion on the war, and where he thinks they are and what the impact is having when it comes to gas prices," Bash added.

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