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One World with Zain Asher

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese Visits The White House; Amazon Web Services Outage Continues; Virginia Giuffre Posthumous Memoir Due Out Tuesday; Police Hunt For Jewels And Thieves After Daring Louvre Robbery. Aired 12-1p ET

Aired October 20, 2025 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:15:50]

ZAIN ASHER, CNN ANCHOR: All right. You've just been watching a 30-minute press conference with President Donald Trump at the White House and also

the Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

Some of the issues that came up, obviously, in addition to the importance that Donald Trump's places on getting a fair trade deal with China. Some of

the other issues that came up was at the very beginning. They did sign that rare earth mineral deal with China -- or rather Australia, is trying to

position itself as an alternative to China when it comes to rare earth.

They did talk about the AUKUS trilateral defense security pact in which Australia is going to be acquiring nuclear-powered submarines by the year

2032. And one of the questions that continued to come up repeatedly was this idea of tariffs Australia has among the lowest tariffs placed on it by

the U.S. only, and I say that in quotation marks, only 10 percent. That is because the U.S. runs a surplus, a trade surplus with Australia.

But one of the questions that a lot of the Australian reporters asked was whether or not that -- that tariff rate would indeed come down.

And one of the moments that I think a lot of people are talking about is this moment where President Donald Trump talked to or spoke to rather Kevin

Rudd, the former Australian prime minister, who is now the ambassador, Australian ambassador to the U.S., and essentially said, I never liked you

and I probably never will.

[12:20:08]

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN ANCHOR: Yes. The context behind that being an Australian reporter asked the president knowing that this could create sort

of a viral moment given that Kevin Rudd was literally sitting across from the president to respond to some negative comments that the ambassador had

made about President Trump, to which President Trump said, who is that? That's you. I don't like you. I never liked you.

Let's get to Kevin Liptak who joins us for more from the White House. Notable, these are not two leaders who are ideologically aligned here, the

prime minister from the Labor Party there, but also equally notable, perhaps, is that they were able to get along cordially and seal this deal,

the minerals deal that the prime minister was touting, saying that this had been months in the works.

Also another win for him is getting some more clarity on the AUKUS deal there to get those nuclear-powered submarines. And really interesting

tactically that he did not travel with his defense minister or his foreign affairs minister.

It was just his resources minister that he came here to one track, I guess, mind and issue, and that is try to negotiate a -- a deal with President

Trump on rare earths.

And as they noted, also, perhaps get even a lower tariff rate between the two countries. Talk to us about what stood out to you.

KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes. And I think he was clearly reading the moment as the White House and as President Trump grows more and

more agitated with China about their rare earths and their sort of restrictions on the ability of the United States to get them.

He clearly entered this meeting with an alternative for the president, which he was very receptive to.

You know, when it comes to the AUKUS, that submarine deal, heading into this meeting, there was actually quite a bit of uncertainty about whether

President Trump would actually remain committed to this pact, which was signed during the last administration.

At last check, the Pentagon was reviewing it to ensure that it was, quote, America first, but clearly, President Trump sounding very committed to that

in the meeting today, which will be seen as a big win for the prime minister as he departs Washington later.

And clearly, you know, this is designed as a deterrent to China. And President Trump emphasized that in -- in his discussions of it, saying

that, yes, this was a deterrent, but that he didn't think it would ultimately be needed.

He said he doesn't think that President Xi Jinping will ultimately decide to make moves on Taiwan, which was very interesting.

There was another point when Taiwan came up and someone asked whether President Trump was considering this formal sort of recognition that the

U.S. opposes independence for Taiwan. That's been discussed as potentially something that he will discuss with Xi when they sit down for trade talks

in Korea at the end of this month.

President Trump said he didn't want to talk about that now. That will be a discussion for the two men when they sit down in Korea. So, I think an

interesting thing to keep our eyes on as the president prepares for that very critical Asia trip coming up.

GOLODRYGA: Yes. Also saying that if no deal is reached by November 1st, that 155 percent tariff rate would in fact be imposed on China. But he is

previously, most recently just last weekend, acknowledged that that is not a sustainable tariff rate and hopefully they can work out a deal between

the two sides.

Kevin Liptak, thank you so much.

ASHER: All right. Let's bring back our guest Markus Garlauskas from the Atlantic Council. He was formerly the U.S. National Intelligence Officer

for North Korea on the National Intelligence Council.

I just want to get your thoughts just in terms of watching that 30-minute press conference in terms of what you saw about the relationship that the

U.S. president has with the Australian Prime Minister.

I mean, obviously it was cordial. They are obviously allies. There are several sticking points, especially when it comes to tariffs. But there are

several key areas where they agree on, especially rare earth minerals and Australia's trying to position itself as a credible alternative to China

here.

MARKUS GARLAUSKAS, FORMER U.S. NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE OFFICER FOR NORTH KOREA: Yes. So certainly what we highlighted just before the meeting was

this tremendous opportunity that's presented to these two leaders to make a deal, to counter China's efforts, to use its stranglehold on -- on critical

minerals, particularly on rare earths, to try and apply leverage both to Australia and the United States.

And so they seized on this opportunity. And as you saw, very cordial relationship between the two. And as expected, President Trump did mention

the longstanding history between Australia and the United States, the fact that we've fought side by side, that we've been -- we've been friends,

like-minded countries for -- for such a long time.

And then when you get down into the numbers of the deal, this opportunity, this is something I think that really appeals to both leaders and -- and

really to those of us who are looking for action.

We're talking about billions of dollars of investment and a billion each from the United States and Australia in the next six months to improve our

-- our -- our supply chain for rare earth minerals and so -- and -- and critical minerals and rare earths.

[12:25:11]

So that's tremendous progress, both on, I think, on a personal level and their first meeting, but also on the progress between the two countries.

Another thing really worth highlighting is the fact that you had Secretary in the Navy John Phelan there to emphasize the importance of the U.S.

places on the military relationship and you heard all the positive things that President Trump said about that.

ASHER: All right. Markus Garlauskas, thank you so much.

We'll be right back after the short break with more.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ASHER: All right. Amazon says that all is not well with its cloud services, despite earlier reports that websites were recovering, hundreds of

businesses suffered outages earlier today at Amazon Web Services.

The company is investigating the cause behind this morning's disruption affecting banks, media, airlines, as well as popular apps and websites,

too.

GOLODRYGA: Millions of people are impacted from America to Europe, Australia and Japan.

ASHER: Joining us live now is CNN tech reporter Clare Duffy. I mean, it really goes to show how dependent so many different apps and websites are

on just Amazon Web Services.

One of the things that the company said earlier is that there was an issue with DNS, Domain Name Systems, essentially, which basically translates

websites into IP addresses so that browsers and other apps can load. Just walk us through what specifically the issue was earlier.

CLARE DUFFY, CNN TECH REPORTER: Yes. Look, it -- it's helpful to understand exactly what Amazon Web Services is, because it really does sit at the

heart of so much of the internet.

Previously, businesses, online services would operate their own computers, their own servers, to run their internet services. But now, millions of

businesses rent that server space from Amazon Web Services, and most of the time it is more affordable, it's easier, as long as Amazon doesn't have an

outage like we saw today.

So, these outage reports began around 3:00 A.M. Eastern Time. Within about three hours, Amazon said that it had identified the issue and it had fully

mitigated the problem. As you said there, seems to have something to do with the Domain Name Services, the DNS services, which is basically like a

phone book for the Internet when a user types in a website. It's what tells the backend where to find that content online.

However, it appears that we are not out of the woods just yet. Amazon, more recently reporting ongoing connectivity issues. It says it's continuing to

investigate, although it has identified a number of possible root causes here. So, we're not out of the woods.

[12:30:10]

And it has had really significant, really broad impact. I mean, just to name a few of the websites that have experienced outages because of this

AWS issue, you have United and Delta Airlines, Snapchat, Facebook, Fortnite, the A.I. firm, Perplexity, Coinbase, U.K. government and banking

websites.

And it really does give you a sense of just how fragile the internet ecosystem can be if just one of these major players goes down. So much of

the internet goes down along with it.

ASHER: Yes. What a wake-up call.

Clare Duffy in New York. Thank you so much.

We'll be right back with more.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GOLODRYGA: All right. Welcome back to "One World." I'm Bianna Golodryga.

ASHER: And I'm Zain Asher.

Britain's King Charles is showing support for the Jewish community in Manchester. He visited the synagogue that was a site of a deadly terror

attack earlier this month.

GOLODRYGA: And today's visit was the King's first official engagement since his younger brother, Prince Andrew, announced on Friday that he was giving

up his royal titles due to the string of accusations against him.

No stranger to scandals, the London Metropolitan Police say they are looking into whether Prince Andrew enlisted an officer to dig up dirt on

sexual assault survivor Virginia Giuffre.

ASHER: Giuffre pictured here alongside Andrew, died by suicide this year at the age of 41. Her the posthumous memoir "Nobody's Girl" is set to release

Tuesday. In it, she details years of abuse she allegedly suffered at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein and his inner circle, including Andrew, an

accusation that Andrew strongly denies.

Our royal correspondent Max Foster is in London with more. Max, obviously, the book comes out tomorrow, but just walk us through what new revelations

are going to be revealed here.

MAX FOSTER, CNN ROYAL CORRESPONDENT: So the -- the British media didn't manage to get hold of a book because the bookshop managed to put it on the

shelf a day early, so someone has it, but we haven't seen it ourselves firsthand because it didn't actually very strict about when they release

it. There's so much interest in it, so we're not going to actually get the actual book tomorrow.

[12:35:10]

But we do know in the book that she talks about what she believes is Prince Andrew hiring trolls to troll her online.

And this ties in with what you're talking about there with the Metropolitan Police. So over the weekend, the police did say they're actively looking

into these media reports of Andrew in 2011 sought information to smear Giuffre by asking an officer in the force to find out if she had a criminal

record,

So this was a personal police officer that Andrew went to, and apparently, he said talked about her having some criminal convictions and to look into

that which obviously is a massive allegation undermines Virginia Giuffre's story. And now people are questioning Prince Andrew's story, frankly.

ASHER: All right. Max Foster in London for us. Thank you so much.

All right. One expert is calling the jewel heist at the Louvre Museum a dagger into the heart of France and French history.

GOLODRYGA: Yes. We have exclusive video from a French channel showing the daring heist at the Museum Sunday. Authorities say the heist was carried

out in just seven minutes. Thieves used a truck-mounted ladder to break in through a window.

ASHER: Yes. The suspects then fled on motorcycles. They made off with jewels and artifacts from the French crown jewels dating back to the

Napoleonic era.

Listen to what one man who witnessed the scene had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I had a group with me behind me, like, I was back walking, yes. And we heard like some white noises like somebody stomping on

the window. And I just like trying to figure out what happened.

When I saw the museum staff going to -- to that noise. And then they do -- they did like a turnaround, like, real quick and they -- they start running

and saying, get out, get out, get out, get out. Evacuate, evacuate.

And nobody knew what happened, like, we were -- we -- we heard the sounds. and we didn't have no clue that it was a robbery.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GOLODRYGA: All right. Time now for "The Exchange." Let's bring in CNN's national security analyst Juliette Kayyem. She's a former assistant

secretary at the Department of Homeland Security and a senior lecturer at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Juliette, good to see you.

I mean this would be like something out of the Pink Panther, except it was in real life and brazen enough to happen within just seven minutes time

that these thieves did make mistakes and actually dropped one of the -- the jewels that they -- the crown that they stole.

But that having been said, what does this say about the lack of security at an institution as world renowned as the Louvre that these people were able

to do this out in the open. I think one was wearing like a bright orange --

ASHER: Broad daylight.

GOLODRYGA: -- vest. Yes. Early morning, 9:30 in the morning. What was your reaction when you heard about it.

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, the brazenness was part of the plan. You show up at 9:30 in the morning with the latter.

You want to look like you're not stealing anything. People might have thought that they will rehearse or something like that. And so it's the

brazenness that is just really interesting to me.

They also were sophisticated enough to leave separately. See the thing with jewels as compared to -- to art or like a painting, for example, is -- is

they can have value when divided, when melted, when resold unlike a painting, so they were able to divide up the goods. And therefore, that

shows something very sophisticated to me.

ASHER: Yes. I mean, it's really interesting because -- I mean this idea as Bianna was talking about that it took place in broad daylight, only took

seven minutes. Clearly, these guys knew what they were doing.

But just in terms of the value. I mean, what they took was priceless. The sheer value when you think about what Napoleon, the gifts and the jewels

that Napoleon gave to his wife. I mean, that is incredible.

Just -- just walk us through your reaction to that aspect of it, the real significance of what was taken here.

KAYYEM: Yes. It's interesting, you know, to a lot of research and sort of art and crime just because it's -- it is, as you say, it's political and

it's -- it's national security, and it's about who we are and our identity, whether it's a Persian rug or jewelry or a painting that has meaning for a

country.

And each of them are valued differently, depending on what the commodity is. So like the Persian carpet really has value by who owned it, the Shah

of Iran or a pope. Or, you know, a painting has value essentially by who painted it, right? And we -- we value over a Vermeer that gets stolen or a

Leonardo da Vinci.

[12:40:12]

Jewelry has value, obviously, by who wore it, but also it has value just because the jewels are valuable. You can melt the gold. You can chip up the

diamonds. And we don't know -- I mean, that's why time is of essence because unlike a painting that you can hide from a global search, which

we're seeing now.

Jewelry, you can at least try to get rid of some of it. And it would still be a value, but we just simply don't know. And that's why INTERPOL these,

you know, the -- the cultural crime unit, the INTERPOL and other international entities and law enforcement exist for this purpose because

the value is both in money, but it's also bitter.

GOLODRYGA: Yes. That's what I was going to ask you about. We don't know the --the rationale behind or the motive behind this theft. Was it just to show

that -- that it could be done and embarrass the country and the museum?

Or was it done to do what you just said? That -- that in a way, you wouldn't obviously go and sell the artifact in its entirety, but if you

chip away or if you're able to extract these individual jewels and gems, the chances of selling them on the black market somewhere are -- are much

higher.

The president seems to be very confident that they are going to find these thieves and retrieve these items.

Do you think that he is overpromising at this point?

KAYYEM: Well, I think if he's right, it has to happen fast because this commodity, unlike say of a Vermeer can be divided up very quickly. We

already seen the culprits are -- have -- have divided. It's likely they're not still together. We have to be realistic about this and then they can,

you know, melt or chip away. It depends on what sort of planning they had.

So it is -- and -- and you -- you said they can sell it on the black market. Honestly, they can sell it on the public market. I mean, in other

words, yes, anywhere unlike the Vermeer or unlike a famous, you know, painting, they can -- they -- you know, whoever these people are, whatever

this group is, they could -- they -- they don't have to find a black market.

That's why jewelry is in -- in this world so -- so different than -- than - - than your sort of other commodities.

GOLODRYGA: Well, as you said, time is of the essence here in this investigation.

Juliette Kayyem, thank you so much for joining the show.

That does it for "One World." I'm Bianna Golodryga. I'll be back in about 15 minutes time with "Amanpour."

ASHER: And Zain Asher. Appreciate you watching. "African Voices Changemakers" is up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(AFRICAN VOICES CHANGEMAKERS)

[13:00:00]

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