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Inside Politics

Trump Takes Questions While Meeting With Australian PM; Trump On Ukraine: "I Don't Think They Will, But They Could Still Win"; Trump: "I Think That China Will Come To The Table" On Trade; Trump Says He'll Raise Chinese Tariffs If There's No Deal By Nov. 1; Colombia Recalls Ambassador To U.S. Amid Rising Tensions. Aired 12- 12:30p 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.

[12:00:00]

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: You wouldn't believe the level of complexity, right? And how expensive it is. They're building tremendous docking because they have a lot of ships and a lot of things happening. And I think their military has been very strong, very, very strong.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. President, on the war that you haven't solved yet, Ukraine, Russia's situation. Have you now locked in a meeting? And can you explain just a few weeks ago and how you said that Ukraine could possibly win the war? And--

TRUMP: Well, they could. They could still win it. I don't think they will, but they could still win it. I never said they would win it. I said they could win. Anything can happen. You know, war is a very strange thing. A lot of bad things happen. A lot of good things happen.

If you look at the Middle East, I would say, prior to us hitting Iran so hard, we could have never made that deal, because you would have had a dark cloud over the Middle East. When we took out their nuclear capability, which was one of the great military maneuvers of all time, it was flawless. You saw that those magnificent B-2s, I mean, that was a flawless move that was done by some very talented people, headed up by Pete and everybody else, and our great generals, and general in particular raising cane.

We did a -- we did a great job. And when that happened, everything was different. And we were able to get a deal. If we didn't do that, if it wasn't, you know, they wanted to do that for 22 years, Mr. Prime Minister. For 22 years, I had the pilots here, the B-2 pilots, and they came to the Oval Office, and I thought they deserved it.

They flew 37 hours back and forth. We had 52 tankers up there. We had a lot of planes up there with them, but they were the primary plane, but we had a lot of planes, F-22s and F-35 and F-6, you know, we had a lot of planes, but we had 52 tankers. Can you believe that? And it was just like a flawless mission.

And when -- when it was finished, the Middle East just opened up, amazing. And they've wanted to do it for 22 years. The pilots came up to me, they said, you know, for 22 years, we practiced this maneuver, three times a year, for 22 years. Our predecessors and us, these are now young pilots, you know, but they're -- they're predator -- they're older now, predecessors practiced it.

And they said, we never had a president that would let us do it, but I let them do it, and it totally opened up the Middle East. It took the cloud over the -- you know, we had a dark cloud over the Middle East, and now it's all -- I mean, we have a little situation relatively with Hamas, and that will be taken care of very quickly if they don't straighten it out themselves because you're in violation of their agreements.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: --rare earth minerals, Australia is one of the only places in the world that processes rare earth minerals. Could there be an agreement? China has 90 percent of the processing. Could there be an agreement over processing rare earth minerals with us?

TRUM: Sure. Yes, we are doing that. It's part of the agreement.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: Go ahead, please.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A follow-up on Taiwan. There are reports that you will come up or China is pressuring you to not support independence for Taiwan in exchange for a trader deal.

TRUMP Well, I'm not going to talk about that. What I'll talk about, you and I will have that discussion in a couple of weeks, when I'm in South Korea with President Xi. We're going to be talking about a lot of things. I assume that's going to be one of the things, but I'm not going to talk about that now. Yeah, please go ahead.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. President, you just alluded to the violence in the Middle East. What steps is the administration taking to maintain the ceasefire at this--

TRUMP: Well, a lot of -- a lot of steps, and right now it's in the hands of others. You know, we have 59 countries that agreed to the deal. We have a piece in the Middle East. For the first time ever, we made a deal with Hamas that, you know, they're going to be very good, they're going to behave, they're going to be nice, and if they're not, we're going to go and we're going to eradicate them. If we have to. They'll be eradicated, and they know that. So, they went in. They went in.

And I don't believe it was the leadership, but they had some rebellion in there among themselves, and they killed some people, you know, pretty lot of people. But this is a violent group, you know, you probably noticed over the last 100 years. This is a very violent group of people. And they got very rambunctious, and they did things that they shouldn't be doing. And if they keep doing it, then we're going to go in and straighten it out, and it will happen very quickly and pretty violently, unfortunately.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yeah. Just following up on that question. When you say we are going to eradicate Hamas, who is we? Does that include American booths on the ground?

TRUMP: No, it won't be on the ground at all. We don't need to because we have many countries, as you know, signed on to this deal. The way I view it, 59 countries and unanimous. There's never been -- nobody ever believed this was countries that, four months ago, didn't like each other, and now they're all aligned together.

[12:05:00]

I mean, we've had countries calling me when they saw the some of the killing with Hamas, saying we'd love to go in and take care of the situation ourselves. In addition, you have Israel would go in in two minutes. If I asked him to go in. I could tell him go in and take care of it. But right now, we haven't said that.

We're going to give it a little chance, and hopefully, there will be a little less violence. But right now, you know, they're violent people. Hamas has been very violent, but they don't have the backing of Iran anymore. They don't have the backing of really anybody anymore. They have to be good, and if they're not good, they will be eradicated.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: Go ahead, please.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you think the prime minister weighing on more on the processing?

ANTHONY ALBANESE, AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER: Absolutely, we can, and we have the capacity to do so. And part of this deal is very specific, $8.5 billion dollar pipeline. There will be a billion dollars contributed from Australia and the United States over the next six months, with projects that are immediately available.

There's three groups of projects. Ones that are joint activities between Australia and the United States, such as Alcoa. Secondly is, projects that will be U.S. investment that the U.S. will undertake in Australia, including processing, and then ones that Australia will undertake some as well. One of them is Australia, the U.S. and Japan as well.

So, what we're trying to do here is to take the opportunities which are there. Australia has had a view for some time, bit similar to putting America first. Our plan is called a future made in Australia, which is about not just digging things up and exporting them, but how do we make sure that we have across the supply chains, with our friends being able to benefit, seize those opportunities. So, we certainly see part of what this is about isn't just digging things up. It's also about processing, including that joint ventures between Australia and the United States.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: --the U.S. and Australia really compete with China? Aren't we decades behind in terms of the development--

TRUMP: No, no. I mean, you've been reading the wrong newspapers. We're not decades. We are way ahead of China militarily, the United States. We're way ahead of them in every form of military other than they're building a lot of ships and we'll have that started. We'll be catching them on that.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When it comes to--

TRUMP: But we will -- when it comes to weaponry, when it comes to although, right now AI, the big thing is, AI, they're building more plants in this country than anybody ever imagined. We're going to have over $20 trillion of investment for this year. The most we ever had was a tiny fraction of that.

As an example, Biden, who's, you know, the worst president in the history of our country, by far, by the way. But they were less than a trillion for four years. We're already now breaking $18 trillion of investment in eight months. 18 trillion. No country in history has ever done that.

We're way ahead of China in AI and we're way ahead of China militarily, from the standpoint of the sophisticated weapons. We have weapons that a lot of people don't even know about it. I got them started four years ago. I rebuilt the military four years ago, fortunately, because Biden didn't do anything but give a piece of it away to Afghanistan.

Fortunately, as much as it sounded like it was a small part of what I built, but Afghanistan giveaway was one of the worst. That was probably the most embarrassing day in the period in the history of our country. But we have the greatest military. We have the best equipment. We have the best manufacturers of equipments. We have the best weapons.

When you look at our weapons, I've been talking a lot about our weapons. Everybody wants our weapons, but it's just -- it's great to be working with Anthony. It's great to be working with the people of Australia, because they also -- I mean, it's a smaller country, but you have done a fantastic job in weaponry and the kind of things that we do, a lot of joint work together.

Our militaries work very, very closely together. We've been really an amazing ally, when you think of it, right? There's never been any games. We're just -- we're strongly committed, and they're strongly committed. There are some games with other countries, but there haven't been games with Australia. (CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: Where do you come from?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I am from Australia.

TRUMP: What? Who you were? Nasty guy. Go ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, sorry. Can I ask this--

TRUMP: All right, go ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On your, you know, first time you look at two Australian prime ministers, Scott Morrison and Mel Turnley. They're from same side as politics as you. Mr. Albanese is different side. Can you tell us a bit more about how -- what it's like to look at Mr. Albanese compared to those?

[12:10:00]

TRUMP: Well, I got along. I mean, that wouldn't be fair, because, you know, the man on my right has a big advantage, you know that, right? But I think he's doing a really -- I think he's doing a really good job and we've had a very good relationship. I don't want to compare one with the other, but I'll tell you, this one is, they've got a great -- they really have a great prime minister.

(CROSSTALK)

ALBANESE: I'll use it in my ads in '28

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President, Putin on Thursday. Did you discuss his ongoing attacks on civilian areas in Ukraine?

TRUMP: Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you talk? You say, cut it out. You say, show an article of good faith.

TRUMP: I did. I did. But as you know, most of the people dying are soldiers. The soldiers that are dying in Russia and Ukraine, it's unbelievable. Five to 7000 a week. Can you believe it? And I look at that, and I say it's pretty amazing. But in addition to that, there are attacks on Kyiv and some of the other places, and it's human lives.

But the big number of human lives, the soldiers that are being killed in the battlefield anywhere from five to 7000, sometimes more than that, every single week. It's not even believable. It's a bloodbath. It's the worst since the Second World War, the worst number of people.

And you know, it doesn't affect us in any way. We don't pay anything, because now they pay us for the weapons that they get. The NATO is paying us for the weapons, as you know. It doesn't affect. I guess you could say that's a positive thing. They pay us, but I'm not interested in that. I did straighten it out.

Biden gave them $350 billion. Can you believe it? And all they did is get deeper in. It's just -- it's a shame, give them 350 billion. Lot of lives were lost. That's a war that would have never happened if our president, but we do speak about that. I speak about all of the lives, but I do speak about the civilian lives.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Best lady has done such an amazing job on the Ukrainian children who worked by Russia. Would you support Senator Lindsey Graham's bill to declare Russia a terrorist state? And you have within your power, the most powerful man on earth. Why don't you just enable Ukraine to finish this war tomorrow?

TRUMP: Well, if you know anything about what you were talking about, you'd be able -- you do. I don't think you do, really. I don't think you do because it's a little more complicated than that, but it sounds easy. We're in the process of trying to make a deal. If we make a deal, that's great. If we don't make a deal, it will be -- a lot of people are going to be paying a big price.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMPL Quiet, quiet, quiet.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President Trump -- a question to both of you.

TRUMP: I love his haircut. I'm going to try that. No, I love it. Go ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, as we all know, China controls 90 percent of global supply critical minerals. They have launched attacks on Australian companies, primarily Lynas Rare Earths. How will -- what will happen to China if they don't play fair with this?

TRUMP: So, it's very interesting question. We have a tremendous power and that's the power of tariff. And I think that China will come to the table and make a very fair deal, because if they don't, they're going to be paying us 157 percent in tariffs. Right now, they're paying 55 to 57 percent. When I was first president in first term, we had the greatest economy we've ever had.

And as you know, people don't write too much about it, but China paid us hundreds of billions of dollars worth of money for tariffs. Biden left it, but he didn't enforce it. He gave exceptions to almost everything, and so he left the tariffs, but he didn't really collect the numbers that he should have collected, and because he didn't know what the hell he was doing.

So, now the tariffs are much higher on China than they were before, and they're high on other countries, depending on whether or not we like that country or we get along, and that's for national security purposes. So, I made deals with Japan. I made deals with the European Union, or the whole of Europe, practically. But the European Union made deals with a lot of -- a lot of different people. We have a very fair deal for -- I will say Australia is paying a low number. They do have, or I'll change it, we have a little bit of an advantage. And that when I told you, the advantage we have is airplanes. We sell a lot of airplanes to them, and they need them. It's a very vibrant place and people go in and out. And I look forward to going there myself, and I think it's unlikely I'll be taking a ship. That's a long--

ALBANESE: That's a long journey.

TRUMP: That's a long journey.

(CROSSTALK)

[12:15:00]

TRUMP: So, so -- but China has treated us with great respect. Now, in the past, they didn't treat other presidents with great respect. They would take hundreds of billions and even trillions of dollars out of the country and they would spend it and build their military. Now they're treating us with great respect. Now we'll see what happens. I said, if we don't make a deal, I'm putting on an additional 100 percent on November 1st.

I think we'll make a deal. They threatened us with rare earths, and I threatened them with tariffs, but I could also threaten them with many other things, like airplanes. You know about airplanes? Because they can't get parts for their airplanes. We build their airplanes. We do a great job. They're largely Boeing's, and we could stop the parts. We did stop the parts. Actually, when they did the initial threat, that's a big--

They closed down over 400 of their airplanes, but we don't want to do that. But we have a much simpler thing. If they don't -- if we don't make a deal, we'll charge them a very substantial tariff, and they'll be paying us hundreds of billions of dollars a year with --

(VIDEO UNAVAILABLE)

TRUMP: We're not going to allow that, but we're going to have a fair deal. I want to be good to China. I love my relationship with President Xi. We have a great relationship. I believe, after we leave South Korea, we'll be there together. We thought that would be a good place to meet, and we're going to be meeting. I'll be in Malaysia, I'll be in Japan, I'll be in a couple of others. We'll be sort of doing a little bit of a tour.

I've been invited to go to China, and I'll be doing that sometime fairly early next year. We have it sort of set, but I think we're going to have a very good relationship with China. And again, they will threaten us with rare earths. I don't think they're threatening us too much right now. But they could do that, but I threaten them with something I think is much more powerful, that's tariffs, because at a certain point, they will not be able to do any business with us.

At a certain point if they pay enough tariffs, it's almost like saying, we don't want to do business with you, but it's probably nicer saying, you're going to pay 158, 157 percent tariff, Is a nicer way of saying that we don't want to do business with you. And if they don't do business with us, I think China is in big trouble. I'll be honest with you. I think China is -- I don't know that they even make it. I really do. I believe that they're in big trouble, and I don't want them to be in big trouble. I want them to do great. I want them to thrive, but we have to thrive together. It's a two-way street.

I think when we finish our meetings and it's going to be a big deal. Look, I'm meeting with a lot of other countries, but this seems to be the one that people are very interested in. I think when we finish our meetings in South Korea. China and I will have a really fair and really great trade deal together. I want them to buy soybeans. They stopped buying our soybeans because they thought that was punishment.

And it is punishment to our farmers, but we're not going to allow that to happen, because I made a great trade deal with China, a $50 billion trade deal, and they were great about it. They were doing everything that they were supposed to do. And then when Biden came in, you know, I used to call President Xi all the time to say, thank you or you're not buying enough. In other words, they were supposed to buy.

Biden? Do you think Biden never called him? I don't think Biden never called him. You think Biden lied awake at night, thinking about trade with China? He didn't know what he was doing. He was an incompetent president. We had an incompetent president, but you don't have that anymore.

So, I think we're going to end up having a fantastic deal with China. It's going to be a great trade deal. It's going to be fantastic for both countries, and it's going to be fantastic for the entire world. Thank you very much.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: Thank you very much.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you.

DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: OK. We've been watching President Trump with the Australian prime minister, who was also -- the president was also taking questions from reporters on a lot of different topics, including the military and the economic relationship between U.S. and Australia.

But I think the biggest takeaway for us, and my panel is here with me, is what the president said about Ukraine. David Chalian, the question was about Ukraine and whether Ukraine could still win its war against Russia. And the answer was, they could still win. I don't think they will, but they could still win it. I've never said they would win it. I said they could win. Anything could happen. You know, war is a very strange thing.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR & WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF: Yeah. I mean, when you listen to the president in the last two weeks on this issue, he's a bit all over the place, and it kind of depends on what his last conversation was, right? When he had said in the past, and he's right, I think he did -- he's correct to say. What he said was, they could win. He didn't add on previously. I don't think they're going to win the way he did today, but he did leave that out there, this notion that there was hope for the Ukrainians to still stay in this fight.

[12:20:00]

This is when he was considering maybe giving them tomahawks. And he didn't think -- things were going so well with Putin. Then the two and a half hour. Phone call happens with Vladimir Putin last Thursday, and President Trump seems to be in a very different place publicly, now he wants to see, as he says in his words, if a deal could be made here.

So, he no longer thinks that -- he said at the end of last week, he's not sure if Putin's tapping him along. He could be, but he's willing to explore the option here, which I don't think was, you know, music to Zelenskyy's ears at the end of last week.

BASH: No. And Manu, our colleague, Kevin Liptak, has some great reporting about how tense the meeting that President Trump had with Volodymyr Zelenskyy was on Friday, and, you know, it was after sort of ahead of time. It felt very different than what we had seen in the past, obviously, certainly the very first meeting between President Trump and Zelenskyy.

And as David said, the fact that Putin kind of got in there before the meeting, had a very long conversation with him, and then Zelenskyy came away from the in-person meeting on Friday, according to Kevin sources, at least he was telling European officials this didn't go well.

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of -- there's going to be a lot of concerns, not just in Ukraine with what Trump just said, but also here in Washington. I mean, the Republicans in the Senate were prepared to move ahead with this bill to impose secondary sanctions on Russia. They've been waiting for months for Trump to give a signal to move ahead.

Here, more than 80 Republicans and Democrats have signed on to this bill as a veto proof majority, the Senate Majority Leader John Thune has just waited for Trump to say yes. Last week, he indicated that that could happen this week. How do they respond now, given Trump's comments, because, as David said, he has been all over the map there. Also notable, he was asked directly about the bill pushed by Senator Lindsey Graham to call the label Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. Did not answer that question.

BASH: Yeah, OK. And then one other thing that we want to sort of seize on that the president said, and you noted this as we were watching Jasmine, is that he confirmed that he is going to China.

JASMINE WRIGHT, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, NOTUS: Yeah. He said, early next year, I could go to China. I was invited. I think a lot of that will depend on how the meeting goes next week with President Xi. I think you're seeing Donald Trump both in his interview yesterday on Fox News and today. Kind of set up the barometer for success here. Obviously, he says that he wants them to buy more soybean something that China has not done to this date, and something that has, quite honestly, concerned a lot of his own officials when it comes to their strategy with agriculture.

He wants to be able to make more trade deals. Yesterday, he told Fox News that his intention is not to destroy China. That's a very different tone than what we've heard for the last two weeks, which has been kind of maximally China is going to pay if they cannot get it together. We've seen both Secretary Bessent of the Treasury, other officials kind of de-escalate that tension there, and now we're seeing Donald Trump do it ahead of his meeting.

And so, I think not only has he kind of been all over the place on Ukraine, but you could maybe even argue the same thing on China. And so, a lot of it is going to depend on what he sees from the President Xi in person next week.

BASH: All right. Everybody stand by. Coming up. We have some breaking news, and that is, Colombia recalls its ambassador to the U.S. after the president seems to threaten Colombia with a military attack. We'll explain after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:25:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: Now to some breaking news. Colombia just announced its ambassador to the U.S. has been recalled to Bogota for consultations with the President Gustavo Petro. It comes on the heels of President Trump canceling all U.S. economic aid to Colombia, threatening more tariffs and unleashing this threat to Colombia's president.

Petro, a low rated and very unpopular leader with a fresh mouth toward America, better close up these killing fields immediately, or the United States will close them up for him, and it won't be done nicely. Yesterday, the Pentagon announced it carried out a seventh strike on a boat that it claims was involved in illegal drug trafficking. The administration didn't provide evidence to back that up.

Joining me now is retired Navy Rear Admiral John Kirby, who served as President Biden's national security communications director. And this announcement next month, he's going to have a brand new role, the director of the University of Chicago's Institute of Politics. Congratulations on that, John. We'll get to that in a minute. But I do want to ask about this news. The Colombian ambassador to the U.S. being pulled back. You just heard about the threats that President Trump is making. What's your take?

JOHN KIRBY, DIRECTOR, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO'S INSTITUTE OF POLITICS: Yeah. That's a fairly typical response by a government that's feeling pressure from the United States to pull their ambassador back for consultations. I'm not surprised by that, quite frankly. I would have expected it even maybe before now but -- and I think we, in the Biden administration certainly had our challenges with the Petro administration. This is not a man who is doing or has a record of doing the right thing for the Colombian people, or, quite frankly, for the region.

So, a muscular approach by President Trump towards Colombia he's talking about maybe tariffs. I think that's a healthy thing for him to be considering and to look at. There's certainly a drug trade that comes out of Colombia. There are other regional challenges that they -- that Mr. Petro poses. So again, I favor a muscular approach by President Trump. I'm a little concerned about these boat strikes, but that's a -- that's a--

BASH: Well, that's exactly what I was going to get to, which is, there's muscular, and then there's actually, you know, rhetorical, muscular, and then there's muscular, using the might of the U.S. military