Return to Transcripts main page

The Lead with Jake Tapper

Manhunt For Thieves Who Stole Louvre's Crown Jewels; Trump Posts AI Video Of Him Dropping Feces On Protesters; Man Arrested In Atlanta Airport After Threatening To "Shoot It Up". Aired 5-6p ET

Aired October 20, 2025 - 17:30   ET

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

[17:00:00]

SARA FISCHER, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: -- around the world. You know, Amazon by far the biggest with like a 33 percent market share, but then you have Microsoft and Google which are also so, so massive.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN CHIEF INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT & ANCHOR: Yeah. And it's still a question of how long it's going to take to pick up the pieces here. A lot of us were sleeping when it happened and there was this ripple effect. Well, Sarah Fischer, thank you so much. And thank you to my panel as well. "The Lead" with my friend and colleague, Jake Tapper, starts right now.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Some of the websites we use every day have been taken down by a massive outage. "The Lead" starts right now. From airlines to banks, Facebook and Starbucks to baseball tickets, companies across the country and around the world are trying to get back to normal after serious issues took their websites and services offline. The outage is even affecting fans' abilities to buy and sell tickets for tonight's American League Championship series baseball game. What went so wrong? And does this expose bigger vulnerabilities that hostile actors can exploit?

Plus, moments ago, lawyers for former FBI Director James Comey launched two separate efforts to get the charges he's facing thrown out of court altogether. Comey's team claiming he was singled out for prosecution because of his criticism of President Trump. We're breaking down everything that's in these brand new court filings.

And one of the most popular museums in the world is shut down today after a brazen robbery being called a national disaster. Priceless jewels stolen from the Louvre in broad daylight. Now the manhunt is on as experts worry the crime might never be solved.

Welcome to "The Lead," I'm Jake Tapper and we start with our "Tech Lead." Now, it's not just you. Websites all over the world have been failing to load for millions of people today. Many people could not order drinks or food or goods on popular apps. They couldn't even buy or sell tickets for events. Some missed doctor's appointments because they couldn't check in. Thousands struggled at their jobs with programs that just simply would not work.

That's because of technical difficulties with Amazon Web Services or AWS. That's a cloud computing provider owned by Amazon and hosts many of the websites and services that we all use on a daily basis, including United Airlines, Delta Airlines, Google, Venmo, Facebook, several banks in the U.K., and Amazon itself, among others. It also apparently includes Ticketmaster because ahead of tonight's critical winner take all game seven of the American League Championship Series between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Seattle Mariners, the Blue Jays have tweeted, quote, "We're actively working with Ticketmaster and Amazon Web Services to resolve the issue as soon as possible. Hold off on managing your tickets as we work through this," unquote.

Let's bring in CNN's tech reporter, Claire Duffy. Claire, earlier today, Amazon, they thought they'd fix the problem, but then more issues started popping up. Is there a fix in place now and what's the cause of this?

CLARE DUFFY, CNN TECH REPORTER: Yeah, Jake, the latest that we've heard from Amazon is that all of their services are effectively back online. The company says it is seeing recovery across all areas of its Amazon Web Services business. And there were a number of sorts of different issues that the company experienced throughout the day. That's why we saw this issue where they said things were back online. And then we saw more outages reported, everything from not being able to order Starbucks, to not being able to access your banking information.

The impact of this has been really widespread because AWS sits at the heart of much of the internet. As you said there, previously in the early days of the internet, companies would often host their websites on their own computers or servers, but now millions of businesses rent server space from Amazon Web Services to operate their business. And normally that makes things easier and cheaper unless there is an outage like today. AWS serves 37 percent of the cloud computing market. It is the number one cloud services provider. And so I think you get a sense of the sort of fragility of the internet ecosystem when just one of these major players goes down.

This is also Amazon's biggest moneymaker. So potentially a major impact to the business if we were to see sort of ongoing outage issues. Now, In total, just from the outage that we saw today, one expert told me that he estimates the financial impact of this is going to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars because consumers weren't able to spend normally, people weren't able to go to their jobs and operate as they normally would. And so really widespread impact. Hopefully Amazon's latest announcement that things are back online is going to hold for the rest of the day, Jake.

[17:05:00]

TAPPER: All right, Clare Duffy, thanks so much. Joining us now to discuss is the executive editor of "WIRED" magazine, Brian Barrett. Brian, is it surprising to you at all how long it's taking to actually fix this problem?

BRIAN BARRETT, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, WIRED: You know, it's not really, I think, because what happens is whenever you have an incident like this, there tend to be cascading problems. So Amazon got a handle on the first issue that it had pretty early this morning, East Coast time. But then as they were trying to bring all of their customers back online, that led to a different kind of problem, which leads to more problems. So it ends up being this sort of, you know, as soon as you fix one thing, the solve might introduce more the things that break. So it's going to be a while, I think, until everything's fully settles down.

TAPPER: In a piece published by WIRED today, one of your colleagues writes, quote, "reliance on central cloud services from giants like AWS, that's Amazon, Microsoft, Azure, and Google Cloud services has in many ways improved cybersecurity stability around the world by creating a baseline of guardrails and best practices for all customers. But this standardization comes with major trade-offs because the platforms become a single point of failure for large swathes of critical services." Does today's incident perhaps suggest there should be more variety in cloud services.

BARRETT: Yes, I think anytime you have a market where you've got two- thirds of the market is held by three individual companies, whether that's cloud services or SODA, whatever it is, I think you want a little bit more diversity there for a host of reasons. I think in this case for individual companies, I think they should really think about, well, are we diversified in the cloud? Because you're often locked into one cloud provider, you're not necessarily -- smaller businesses can think about hosting things themselves.

To that point though, do think there is a situation, as that story by my colleague, Lily Hay Newman says, where they are good at security. They are very good at the cloud, right? And that's why they're so successful. It's just when it breaks you really, really feel it.

TAPPER: So the good news, if there is any good news, is that this was not caused by a cyber-attack. This wasn't China or Russia. But still, that's where a lot of us, our minds first ran. And I guess my question is based on what we're seeing today, should we be worried that these kinds of disruptions could theoretically be caused by hacker and then wouldn't be easily fixed?

BARRETT: You know, that always comes up and people think there might be a denial of service attack or some other sort of sophisticated attack. I think what we've seen, well, two things. One, I think it's really hard to bring these systems down through brute force. I think you'd have to have a pretty sophisticated attack to actually get in and cause this kind of disruption. And if you're that sophisticated, what you typically would find more value in, which is still alarming, is the information that you can access if you're in one of these cloud systems, right?

It's less let's knock the whole thing offline and more, how can we sit here and sort of siphon off whatever information we need, which we've seen Russia, China in particular doing on all kinds of systems across the country. I'm not saying that they're doing that. Again, AWS has a really good security reputation. I don't think we necessarily need to worry about someone knocking all this stuff down and not bringing it back, but I do think it's an important reminder to these cloud companies and their customers that look, if this breaks, you don't have a way to fix it yourself. You're waiting for them to do it. TAPPER: Should companies out there that can afford it consider

transferring from cloud services to on-premise software to avoid these kinds of issues?

BARRETT: You know, maybe -- I think for so many companies that's not really practical on a cost basis. A lot of people don't have the expertise in-house to do that. So I think if you're worried about security, trying to set up your own on-premises system might make you more exposed in fact than being on the cloud, especially for a provider that has a really good background. I think if anything, you do want to think about diversifying where you're keeping your data.

For your sake, for your customer's sake, maybe that's some on-prem, maybe that's some in the cloud with a big provider. But I think a rush away from these systems is not probably the way to go for a lot of people. I don't think it's probably not practical to ask Starbucks to put all of its mobile ordering somewhere in Seattle.

TAPPER: Right. All right, Brian Barrett, thanks so much. Really helpful in terms of understanding what's going on.

BARRETT: Thank you.

TAPPER: We have some breaking news for you in our "Law and Justice Lead." Attorneys for former FBI Director James Comey are right now launching two separate efforts to try to get the charges against Comey thrown out of court entirely. That's next.

Plus, Police arresting a man at the Atlanta airport this afternoon after his family alerted officers that he was planning to quote, "shoot it up." What authorities found inside his car, that's ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[17:10:00]

TAPPER: We have some breaking news for you now. The former FBI director James Comey's defense team is moving to kill his case with a series of new motions tonight. They're accusing Trump's Justice Department of a quote, "vindictive prosecution." They're alleging that the president directed the prosecution of Comey quote, "in retaliation for public criticisms and to punish him because of personal spite," unquote. Another motion from Comey's defense attorneys aims to remove Trump's hand-picked interim U.S. attorney, Lindsey Halligan, from the case. She's the acting U.S. attorney.

They claim that Comey's indictment is fatally flawed over what Comey's team suggests is an invalid appointment because of a rule that the number two official in the office serves as acting U.S. attorney until the Senate confirms a new appointee. Halligan was just installed after President Trump removed the former acting U.S. attorney.

Meanwhile, the prosecutors, Trump's team at the Justice Department, they want to oust Comey's top defense attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald. They suggest he could have a conflict of interest, and they claim that Comey might have used Fitzgerald to leak classified material to the media, which Comey denies. CNN senior justice correspondent, Evan Perez is here. Evan, tell us what you're learning about these filings from the Comey team they just dropped.

[17:15:01]

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, well normally, Jake, these are the type of filings that we would obviously note, but they don't stand a chance normally, normally. But there is no case like this, right? We've never seen the President of United States just publicly go after someone and order their prosecution in this way. And so in some ways, what the Comey attorneys are doing is they're using Donald Trump's own words to try to help their case here.

They note that, you know, Trump is obsessed with Comey and has called him a corrupt piece of garbage, a disgraced liar and leaker, a weak and untruthful slimeball, a very sick and very dumb person. There are 59 pages of Trump tweets that they filed with the court. I've never seen anything like that. And so we'll see whether this has any better chance to survive. Again, normally judges are very reluctant to throw out charges because obviously, you know, the presumption is that the government has good faith in bringing a case like this.

The other part obviously is that two can play this game and that's the reason why you saw the government make the motion to disqualify Pat Fitzgerald, who is Comey's lead attorney. We'll see whether that goes anywhere. What they simply want to do is litigate whether Pat Fitzgerald in representing Comey during the 2017 period, whether he is in some way, you know, disqualified himself by having a conflict of interest. I don't think that goes very far, but you'll see now this play out in court.

Remember, we have a court date, we have a trial date in early January, which is exceedingly fast for a case of this --

TAPPER: Right. The defendant has a right to a speedy trial and James Comey has decided he wants to exercise that right.

PEREZ: Right.

TAPPER: Evan Perez, thanks so much. Let's talk about this with Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland. He's the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. Congressman, what do you make of this latest development in what is sure to be an intense battle between Comey and the Trump Justice Department?

REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): Well, there's extraordinary and overwhelming evidence of personal spite by the president and that this is indeed a vindictive prosecution driven completely by the president. I mean, if all that evidence was somehow obtained from behind the scenes maneuvering, that would be incredibly damning. The fact that he actually put it out in the open is, I think, almost conclusive.

How could you say that this was not a vindictive prosecution? The argument on the other side would have to be, well, objectively there was enough evidence there, but unfortunately for Donald Trump, he had to sack the prior U.S. attorney, Eric Siebert, force him out of the job because he, who himself was a conservative Republican appointee who Trump had named to the position, had rejected the idea of prosecuting Comey.

So, I just think if you look at the subjective evidence, you look at the objective evidence, it's a very tough case for someone to allow to go forward. I haven't been able to read the pleadings about why the U.S. attorney was illegally appointed, but I know that that exact same motion was brought in New Jersey and in Nevada, and the judges also approved those because Trump was so adamant about getting his own new person in to do the dirty work that the prior U.S. attorneys wouldn't do, that he ignored and betrayed the statute, which had the number two person in the office taking over in a situation like that.

TAPPER: Let's turn to the government shutdown, which affects so many millions of Americans. The big issue for Democrats in the shutdown has been wanting Republicans to agree to extend the Obamacare subsidies, which are set to expire at the end of this year. November 1st is the start of open enrollment for health insurance through Obamacare. Punchbowl News notes that some Senate Democrats see November 1st as something of an off-ramp to end the shutdown.

They write, quote, "Democrats can argue it's no longer feasible for Congress to address the expiring Obamacare subsidies legislatively. The goal here would be to make Republicans own the soaring premium hikes and health care coverage losses that millions of Americans would experience," unquote. Is that an exit strategy that you would be willing to consider? You take the political win without the policy win as it were?

RASKIN: I mean, I've heard that theory Jake and personally I reject it. We're not interested in pinning a terrible policy that America's got to live with on the Republicans. We're interested in stopping that policy and inviting the Republicans to come back to the table, urging them to come back to Washington. They've been on this nearly month long paid vacation. And they are ignoring the fact that the vast majority of Americans wants to save the health care system that we've got.

[17:19:57]

And that means those ACA tax credits, the subsidies for the insurance premiums people get every month. I mean, that's going to be millions of people whose health insurance is going to be going up and a lot of them are not going to be able to do it. So that means they're not going to have health insurance, which means they're going to be sicker, they're going to go in at the last minute. They're going to overwhelm the emergency rooms and so on. And it's a similar assault on Medicaid.

So I have not heard any Democrats, none have said to me, oh, let's just allow this terrible Republican policy to go forward so we can beat them on it next year. We're going to beat them on the fact that they even thought about throwing millions of people off of their health care and they closed the government down to do it, and they're refusing to release the Epstein files, and they're refusing to swear in our new colleague, Adelita Grijalva. TAPPER: Right. Congressman, you called it a terrible Republican

policy. Democrats are the ones that put in this end date into these COVID-era Obamacare premium extensions, not Republicans. But be that as it may, do you have the votes? I mean, if Speaker Johnson were to say, okay, fine, we're going to have a vote on this tomorrow, have you and your Democratic colleagues lobbied five to 10 Republicans in the House to support you so that if this were to come up for a vote it would pass?

RASKIN: Well, we're lobbying republicans all the time and we're trying to explain to them and the rest of the country what this will mean. We've been aided by the arrival of Marjorie Taylor Greene and other republicans who saying look this is very problematic what they're doing. I think Mr. Van Drew from New Jersey said this would be politically disastrous for them as well as morally bankrupt for them just to allow all of these people not to have health care in our country.

And by the way, the reason that it expired is because that was all that we could get. But we've been arguing for a renewal of those tax credits for months, so I don't accept that particular Republican talking point. We've all got the opportunity to do the right thing right now together, and we should be doing it. And we're asking them to come back to Washington and do their jobs, or at least they shouldn't be taking pay for the last month while they're talking about throwing federal workers who are on furlough off of their paychecks and not allowing them to get paid in the end.

If anybody shouldn't be paid, it's Mike Johnson and the Republicans who are not doing their job. They're back in their districts and they're not having town hall meetings because they can't face their constituents over this.

TAPPER: Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin of the state of Maryland, thank you so much sir.

We are following more breaking news tonight as an appeals court has just allowed the Trump administration to deploy the National Guard to Portland, Oregon. Those details are next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[17:25:00]

TAPPER: We have breaking news for you in our "Law and Justice Lead" and a big legal win for the Trump administration. Today, a federal appeals court is allowing President Trump to send in National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon. Meanwhile, in Chicago, a judge is demanding answers on whether federal immigration authorities defied a court order by continuing to use tear gas against anti-ICE protesters. Joining us now, the former mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel. Rahm, first on Oregon, what's your reaction to the appeals court allowing Trump to send in troops to Portland?

RAHM EMANUL, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL & GLOBAL AFFAIRS COMMENTATOR: Look, I haven't gone through it. I kind of find it weird given what the circuit court, the lower court decided in that effort. And I look at this and I'm like, not sure why they gave a permission slip to do that. And again, I get back to a situation like here in Chicago, not knowing how the court's going to rule here, which is the federal government can be an essential partner to any local state and local governments about dealing with public safety that needs resources.

All the time that the U.S. Attorney's Offices in these areas are dealing with these filings they should be actually prosecuting gang members and getting them off the streets. So I'm not familiar with the legal opinion. I've read a couple things that other people have done interpreting it, but again I find it a little weird given what the lower court had said and they've come to two separate opposite conclusions.

TAPPER: Let's turn to closer to home for you. In Chicago today, a judge questioned federal agents use of force against anti-ICE protesters including whether these ICE officials or agents violated her order to avoid less lethal munitions and tear gas. What is your reaction and what is your opinion when it comes to the tactics ICE agents are using in Chicago?

EMANUEL: Look, I mean, you have literally ICE agents using tear gas in which 20 officers, Chicago police officers, were hit with that tear gas. Now, the president's claim for wanting to send the National Guard is because he said Chicago was a war zone. The only time there was tear gas is when he sends in the National Guard. There was no tear gas before. Now, again, I want to repeat, there is a need for federal government to be a partner with local officials on dealing with public safety.

For the money you're spending on National Guard, you can help train 500 community police officers who will be permanently placed on Chicago streets. You can help defer the cost for 30,000 kids in after- school programs. You can use the resources to actually prosecute gang members, the hard ones, and get them off the street. Any mayor would die for a federal government to come in and say here's what we're going to do.

I look at this and the judge has concluded that she issued -- they issued a series of opinions basically putting kind of a parameter around the use of the National Guard and it looks like it was summarily ignored by the National Guard.

[17:29:57]

And it's not what -- there was no tear gas being used before, definitely not tear gas on police offers before. They showed up and the very thing that the president said he was trying to avoid is what he has instigated with using National Guard from around the country here in the streets of the city of Chicago.

[17:30:12]

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: I want to turn to the Israel-Hamas ceasefire. It appears to be holding despite some hiccups, I mean, I should call there -- it's more than hiccups. I mean, two IDF soldiers were killed. EMANUEL: Right.

TAPPER: Israel responded with airstrikes in Gaza over the weekend, causing all sorts of violence there. Earlier today, President Trump threatened that he would eradicate Hamas if Hamas breaks the deal. Right now, both Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, the President's special envoy, are in the region. How do you think the Trump administration is handling these many outstanding issues as they try to segue to phase two of the deal, which includes trying to get Hamas to either lay down arms or leave Gaza?

EMANUEL: Yes, I mean, I have a couple things and go through them in order. The sooner that there's an international force that can be sent in, you can both disarm Hamas and you can get the type of security that you need for the Palestinian people to go back to their lives and start the rebuilding process. There isn't that international force. And therefore you have this kind of standoff between the Israel IDF one side of the yellow line and Hamas trying to reassert authority and doing it with some violence to Palestinians, let alone what they're doing to the Israeli soldiers.

So to me, what's missing here is the mot -- is the linchpin for stage two to take hold and be there. I do want to take one step back. I've said before, I compliment the Trump administration and President Trump for basically getting the 20 hostages out after two years in the tunnels and also getting a ceasefire to take hold. And I say that also, you have now Saudi Arabia talking about a security agreement with the United States. You had Qatar sign one or agree to one with the United States.

Think about the position the United States is now in the Middle East without losing a soldier. We are the dominant power, which were before, unlike what happened in the Iraq war. We lost thousands of Americans, spent a trillion dollars. America has reestablished its dominant position in an important part of the world. That is a success for the United States and that is a good thing.

Now we should use that power and prestige and power in the Ukraine situation. And in that situation, I fault the administration. There is no 20-point ceasefire plan. Just saying you should agree to what Putin said doesn't mean you're going to do it. You had a plan which you got the parties to agree to. There is none of that existing in Ukraine.

TAPPER: Interesting. Rahm Emanuel, thanks so much. Appreciate it.

How does a group of thieves manage to steal priceless jewels from one of the most popular museums in the world in broad daylight? The heist at the Louvre is next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[17:37:05]

TAPPER: An international manhunt is our World Lead. A manhunt underway after thieves stole priceless jewels from the Louvre Museum in Paris. In what appears to be a professional heist, four collaborators managed to break in and steal tiaras, brooches, necklaces and earrings in just seven minutes. CNN's Melissa Bell is outside the Louvre with the latest on efforts to recover the stolen crown jewels.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MELISSA BELL, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was 9:30 a.m. when a witness calls the police from outside the Louvre to report suspicious individuals wearing motorcycle helmets breaking into the museum using a truck with a lifting platform. By 9:37 a.m. a museum alarm was triggered. Shortly after, a camera catches one of the robbers wearing a yellow vest as they break into a display case, then quickly escaping through the window they used to get in. By 9:38, the thieves flee the scene on scooters. The entire heist was done in just seven minutes and involved the most rudimentary of tools, this angle cutter and blowtorch.

ARIEL WEIL, MAYOR OF PARIS CENTER: It does appear that these were extremely well trained robbers. They clam us meticulously, obviously.

BELL (voice-over): The thieves made off with priceless jewelry worn by French queens in the 19th century, like this tiara necklace and a single earring of Queen Marie Amelie, this large bodice bow broach of Empress Eugenie, the wife of Napoleon III and her tiara.

BELL: One thing the robbers dropped and as they fled from that window on the first floor was the crown of the Empress Eugenie, the wife of Napoleon III. What they made off with, though, were eight pieces of jewelry of inestimable value in historical and cultural terms. And they did so on the back of scooters as they headed down this bank of the Seine River.

NATHALIE GOULET, FRENCH SENATOR: I think the pieces are already far from the country. So "Ocean 13." It's Thomas Crown. So easy and not sophisticated. It's -- it's a drama for the French culture and also for our image.

BELL (voice-over): By Monday, the Louvre remained closed as investigators tried to piece together how so much could have been stolen so quickly and why.

LAURE BECCUAU, PARIS PROSECUTOR (through translator): Either it was commissioned by a collector, in which case, if we identify this collector and commissioner and can't find the jewels in good condition, or it could also happen that it was commissioned by people who just want the stones and pearls that they were made of.

BELL (voice-over): Authorities say the investigation continues, but the longer it takes to identify the suspects, the slimmer the chances of recovering the jewels.

Melissa Bell, CNN, Paris.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: Melissa Bell, thank you so much for that report. Let's bring in Anthony Amore. He's the director of security for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, which you may remember, that was the victim of another infamous heist back in 1990. Thirteen pieces of art were stolen. That crime remains the single largest property theft in the world. That has never been solved. Mr. Amore was not in charge at the time. I want everyone to know.

[17:40:08]

I think the question everyone is asking today, Mr. Amore, how -- how in the world does this happen at one of the most famous museums in the world where you would think there would be just incredible security?

ANTHONY AMORE, DIRECTOR OF SECURITY, GARDNER MUSEUM: Well, Jake, you know, there is good security there and most museums do have good security, but no place is impenetrable. And when you see the method used by these thieves, which was sort of a brute force approach, they -- they combined this clever approach with using this construction equipment so that they sort of blended into the scenery and -- and -- and used tools to get through the window. It's a tough thing to prevent.

TAPPER: You've suggested that the timing of theft might suggest there was some kind of inform -- inside information. Tell us more. What do you mean by that?

AMORE: Well, it could be, you know, why didn't they do this at say 7 o'clock in the morning or 8 o'clock before the museum opened? They did it at 9:30 when the doors were open. And perhaps it's a speculation, the museum had lowered some of its technological guards protecting the building so that they could get in. I mean, the Louvre is the most visited museum in the world. I would suspect if it was me, that if I was going to climb into a window when the museum was open, the gallery would be packed. But when they got into the Apollo Gallery, it was empty. They must have known that.

TAPPER: So art recovery expert, Arthur Brand, says that because these pieces are so recognizable, he believes the thieves are probably going to dismantle them and sell the jewels and melt down the gold and silver. Do you agree?

AMORE: That's probably the -- the reason they did this. I mean, you can't fence these things. It's sort of like a masterpiece painting. Nobody's going to buy it from you. There is no person commissioning these heists for that reason. There's no collector. So but I think that the thieves are probably holding off for a bit first to see, hopefully to see what the museum's response is going to be. It's a government museum, so it's probably self-insured. So I wonder if they're waiting to see if a reward is offered.

TAPPER: Well, there might -- there might be some collector. I mean, the -- the paintings that were stolen from the museum at which you work, they're hanging somewhere probably, right?

AMORE: No, no, that's never happened. Actually, Jake, when masterpieces are stolen, the people who stole them quickly find out they're too recognizable and too valuable. And there's really no buyers out for them. You're not going to find an instance really in history where that's happened. So perhaps things are stolen thinking you can sell them, but you quickly learn you cannot, which is more difficult for an investigation because if you hold the stuff tight and you don't shop it around, then it makes -- make for less witnesses.

TAPPER: Anthony Amore, thanks so much. Appreciate your insights.

[17:42:54]

Brand new pictures showing surprise images of demolition beginning at the White House of the East Wing to build President Trump's massive ballroom. What? That story's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Our Politics Lead now, demolition crews were at the White House today at work tearing down a portion of the East Wing in order to build President Trump's long desired ballroom. At the time the President signed the executive order authorizing the ballroom construction, Trump said, quote, it won't interfere with the current building. It won't be. It'll be near it but not touching it and pays total respect to the existing building, which I'm the biggest fan of, unquote.

But the photos that we're looking at right now, well, that seems says otherwise. My panel joins me now. Shermichael Singleton, quite an image. What comes to mind when -- look, I'm sure the ballroom will beautiful, but --

SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Sure, sure.

TAPPER: -- he did say that this exact thing was not going to happen.

SINGLETON: Yes. I wonder if the President knew what it would potentially take to build a ballroom of a certain size. And this isn't a negative or a knock against the President. I assume he wants to entertain foreign dignitaries and other guests similarly to what he would down in Florida at Mar-a-Lago. So I -- I get it. This is a bit of a different addition to the White House. I'm curious, though, Jake, to see if other presidents in the future will keep it or if some may try to change it into something else.

TAPPER: How -- how much power does a sitting president have to make such drastic changes to the -- the physical White House?

CHUCK ROCHA, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Evidently, he start knocking it down. I mean, this is what I'm getting at.

TAPPER: Well, facade of the East Wing but, yes.

ROCHA: Something was knocked down. I saw a crane. I'm from East Texas. I know what a crane is. That is bad. Something's coming down. Now, the point of my -- my rant here is that, man, it's just something else to be mad about Democrats. I mean, good God almighty, it's the White House. And I know he said he wasn't going to mess with it and stuff, but the White House is sacred, like, there's a lot of things about it that sacred. You want to make an improvement? Make an improvement but he shouldn't be knocking things down.

TAPPER: Speaker Johnson found himself at the center of something of a, let's call it a sewage storm today, all thanks to an A.I. video that the President posted on social media. It's himself flying a naval jet, like "Top Gun," donning a crown, dropping what appear to be feces on hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of his fellow Americans exercising their American rights to peacefully assemble. That's who he's dropping, that slop on. The A.I. generated video quickly went viral, prompting reporters to ask Speaker Johnson about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA), HOUSE SPEAKER: The President uses social media to make a point. You can argue he's probably the most effective person who's ever used social media for that. He is -- he is using satire to make a point.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: The point that he's making Shermichael, that he wishes he could drop --

SINGLETON: I mean, I -- I -- I think --

TAPPER: -- feces on his fellow Americans.

SINGLETON: Look, this is what I think. I think a lot of Republicans look at this. And I've texted a lot of folks about it. They thought it was hilarious. They thought it was funny. Some of my Democratic friends thought it was a little over the top. But even they acknowledged to me, you know, I got to give it to Trump. He is good at sort of goading our side with some of these sort of satirical videos and other memes that he typically would post on social media. It makes him more relatable to the average person.

[17:50:14]

You wouldn't typically see this from a president, but the average person looks at this Jake, and they sort of laugh or they dislike it. But I don't think it's something to sort of set your hair on fire over.

TAPPER: Well, people set their hair on fire when Hillary Clinton referred to half of Trump's supporters in 2016 as belonging in a basket of deplorables. They set their hair on fire when Joe Biden referred to Trump, yes, Trump supporters as -- as garbage or he seemed to be saying that. Here is the President. Those are gaffes, right? Those are accidents, mistakes. They wish they could take it back. Here's the President strategically putting out a video of him dropping human feces on the millions of Americans who -- not violent Antifa rioters, not dangerous MS-13 gang members who are not in this country legally, but people just assembling and protesting him.

ROCHA: I think that when we talk about the middle of the electorate, there's a whole group of people on the far right and on the far left. And as we come up on the midterm elections, there's a group in the middle, college educated suburban folks who just want common sense things done. They're not far right, far left. Most of them are physically conservative. They're a little more liberal on social issues. When they see something childish, no, say childish like that, it's the reason why they don't want to vote for Donald Trump or the Republicans. And I think that this is going to have long lasting effects because it just happens over and over.

SINGLETON: Come on, Chuck. Come on. Look, I spent about an hour over the weekend looking at some of the images and videos of people who were protesting the No Kings rally. And it was mostly white people. I didn't see any men. You guys are struggling with that. I didn't see men of color. You guys are struggling with that. I didn't see a whole lot of black people, didn't see a whole lot of Hispanic people. I saw mostly white people. So if I -- so as a Republican, I feel pretty confident about midterms next year based on what I saw over the weekend.

ROCHA: I voted in every Democratic primary since I was 18 years old and I've never been to college. I was an all-state football player and I was baptized in a Baptist church.

SINGLETON: It sounds like a Republican to me.

ROCHA: We'll see.

TAPPER: What position did you play in football?

ROCHA: Right tackle.

TAPPER: Right tackle. Interesting. We should note the reason weren't playing the sound. The sound in the video is Kenny Loggins singing "Danger Zone," which you might be too young to remember. But you and I remember when we saw "Top Gun."

ROCHA: Yes.

TAPPER: That was a big hit. Kenny Loggins wrote, quote, this is an unauthorized use of my performance of "Danger Zone." Nobody asked me for my permission, which I would have denied. And I requested that my recording on this video is removed immediately. Probably not a surprise to you, Shermichael.

SINGLETON: Yes, no, there have been many artists in the past that have requested when the President was running, hey, we don't want you using our music. For the most part, the campaign at the time said, OK, no problem. We'll move on to something else. This is another case. I think the President perhaps loves the song. He typically plays a lot of songs from the 80s and 70s and a lot of those artists at the time have, not surprising to me, different political views from the President. So look, we'll play something else. It's not that big of a deal.

TAPPER: The Department of Homeland Security is clapping back today after news broke that the Coast Guard bought two private jets for Secretary Kristi Noem and others to use. The Department posted, bottom line, this is about safety and readiness. She'll have authority to use them, sure. They're replacing 20-plus-year old airplanes. Democrats meanwhile, jumped all over the news posting the government shutdown, health care premiums are skyrocketing, Americans can't afford groceries and Kristi Noem gets two luxury private jets, anyway.

ROCHA: I remember when the Republicans were -- were for cutting government costs and even created DOGE to say that we didn't need things and started laying people off. But when I saw it was $200 million for two airplanes, good God.

TAPPER: Shermichael?

SINGLETON: You know, look, I know a lot of people with private planes. I don't know a lot of private planes --

ROCHA: I'd like to ride.

SINGLETON: -- that cost that much money. I mean, maybe --

TAPPER: Well, this is Coast Guard security, you know, I mean, like it's not just --

SINGLETON: Yes. I mean, look, I do wonder what was the cost to improve the other planes compared to buying the new one. And so it could have been the case where it was more cost effective to buy brand new planes than updating the old ones. And they'll sell the old ones and probably recoup some of that money.

TAPPER: Shermichael Singleton, Chuck Rocha, thanks to both of you for being here.

[17:53:53]

Police arrested a man outside the Atlanta airport this afternoon after his family warned officers that this man was armed and headed to the airport to, quote, shoot it up. We're going to bring you those breaking details next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: In our National Lead, police say that a tragedy was just averted at the world's busiest airport -- airport. Body cam video shows police arresting a suspect today inside Atlanta, Georgia's Hartsfield Jackson International Airport. This after his family warned authorities that he was headed to the airport to shoot it up. Police say he had an AR-15 assault rifle in his vehicle outside. CNN's Isabel Rosales is in Atlanta. Isabel, how did this unfold?

ISABEL ROSALES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Jake, what we saw was Atlanta's mayor and his police chief profusely thanking the family of the suspect for averting what they believe have been a mass shooting at the world's busiest airport by notifying authorities that something wasn't right. So let me give you the timeline of events here with the suspect, Billy Cagle, 49 years old. He's a convicted felon for marijuana possession more than two decades ago. And authorities say he had mental health challenges. So this started at 9:29 in the morning where Billy Cagle, he's on video arriving there at the south terminal. Two minutes later, he leaves his car outside and then goes inside of the airport. The police chief here in Atlanta say that he was very interested in the TSA check in area that was heavily, heavily crowded with travelers.

Now, by 9:40 a.m. this is when Cartersville Police Department an hour north of Atlanta alerts APD that there's a potential threat because they were hearing from the family of the suspect that he was on social media streaming, that he was armed, that he was headed to the airport to, quote, shoot it up. Cartersville police saying that he had, quote, intention to inflict harm to as many people as he could.

Now, by 9:54, he was arrested there on the ground, not armed. This would have been 15 minutes since that first call came in to APD. So a very quick effort here by authorities. It's unclear, Jake, if he has an attorney. We're, of course, making those phone calls and reaching out.

[18:00:04]

TAPPER: All right, Isabel Rosales, thank you so much.