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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Possible Presidential Contenders Visit Iowa; The State of U.S.- Israeli Relations; NASA-Contracted Rocket Explodes After Liftoff; Senators Face Off In "Rival Survival"

Aired October 29, 2014 - 16:30   ET

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

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: It's that jazzy political music. All right. The election's coming, five days, politics lead now. Five days away from the midterm elections, and these elections could swing the Senate and the balance of power on Capitol Hill in favor of Republicans or Democrats. You may find it surprising that some of the states getting the most visits this election season from big-name politicians who may run for president, they just happen to be crucial primary and caucus states. Imagine that, possible presidential contenders going to states that are battlegrounds. What are the odds? Our chief congressional correspondent Dana Bash is live in Iowa, for us, Cedar Rapids, specifically. Dana?

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Jake, 460 days. That is the number of days until the tentative date for the Iowa caucuses, but as you said, there is a white-hot Senate election that is going to be this coming Tuesday. That's why candidates, including Hillary Clinton who just wrapped up here, are flooding the zone.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BASH: Hillary Clinton in the Hawkeye State to help get out the vote for the Democratic Senate candidate.

HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: You will never worry where Bruce Braley stands. He's a fighter for Iowa.

BASH: And it's Clinton's second visit to Iowa in two months, ostensibly to help others, but the probable presidential candidate has her own work to do in this first caucus state since she came in third eight years ago.

CLINTON: You test your candidates. You actually force them to be the best they can be.

BASH: Iowa's tight Senate race allows White House hopefuls -- and there are a lot of them -- to get here early and often.

Florida Republican Marco Rubio spent the day with GOP Senate candidate Joni Ernst.

SEN. MARCO RUBIO, R-FLORIDA: Hi, how are you, I'm Marco Rubio.

BASH: Pressing the flesh with Iowa voters at multiple stops.

RUBIO: How Iowa goes, is how the Senate will go. The Senate majority may very well be decided here in Iowa this year.

BASH: Rubio was an early supporter of Ernst for Senate. The bonus for him and others to come and meet Iowa voters and local leaders is undeniable.

This is the third time, I believe, you've been here to Iowa since --

RUBIO: Third or fourth. We've been here a few times.

BASH: Any Republican even considering running for president has made a point of cropping up in the Hawkeye State this midterm election year. Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan, Bobby Jindal, Rand Paul have all come to Iowa multiple times in 2014 alone. Paul even had the good fortune of being chosen by the Chamber of Commerce, a powerful GOP force to appear in their closing ad.

SEN. RAND PAUL, R-KENTUCKY: If you're a freedom-loving, liberty- loving voter, I urge you to get out and vote for Joni Ernst this Tuesday.

BASH: Sometimes testing the waters can be treacherous, like when a voter asked Rubio not about his own presidential prospects, but Mitt Romney's.

RUBIO: I don't know, you'll have to ask him.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I did.

BASH: Things are a lot less chaotic on the Democratic side. Unlike eight years ago when Barack Obama trounced Hillary Clinton in Iowa, she doesn't have much competition here, for now.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BASH: One of the latest controversies in the Senate race here is that the Republican candidate, Joni Ernst, skipped -- abruptly skipped a meeting with the Des Moines Register newspaper editorial board, and Hillary Clinton jumped on that, Jake. She said that in Iowa, you have to be willing to answer tough questions. I'm sure that reporters like you and I and others are going to remind her of that maybe about this time next year.

TAPPER: And Dana, tell us about the women factor in Iowa, the women's vote. What did Hillary Clinton say about the Republican candidate, Joni Ernst?

BASH: So interesting. To me, that was one of the lines that really stuck out with regard to this race. This is kind of a gender politics reversal in this state, because the Republican is a woman. If she wins, she'll be the first woman ever elected statewide in Iowa, but she is conservative. So Hillary Clinton, who of course talked about all the cracks in the glass ceiling when she ran, she made a point saying that just because Joni Ernst is a woman doesn't mean she's good for women's issues.

The point there being that she went after it, she went right there when it comes to gender politics, but also made the point that Democrats are trying to do here and across the country, which is reach out to single women voters. Those are the voters that Democrats really believe that they need in order to do well, because a lot of the married women, especially in a place like here in Iowa, tend to be more conservative, and they seem to be, at least anecdotally, veering more toward Joni Ernst.

TAPPER: Right, although there is an interesting gender reversal going on there with women voters supporting the Democrat, Bruce Braley, and men voters supporting the Republican, Joni Ernst.

Dana Bash in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, thank you so much.

It is no secret that relations between President Obama and the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, have been, let's call it rocky at best. But now the fight between the two frenemies have devolved into the type of name-calling usually reserved for the Facebook comments section. According to the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, one White House official said using Netanyahu's nickname, "The thing about Bibi is he's a chicken blank." He used a different word than chicken blank, but you get the point.

He said, "He's not willing to do anything to reach an accommodation with the Palestinians or with the Sunni Arab states. The only thing that Netanyahu is interested in is protecting himself from political defeat. He's got no guts," the person said. Welcome to Washington where people freely and crudely disparage the courage of others, but only do so anonymously.

Wolf Blitzer, host of THE SITUATION ROOM, joins me now. Wolf, you have been covering the U.S.-Israel relationship for decades. I want to read you this response from the White House when they were asked about the accuracy of this comment. The spokesperson for the National Security Council said in part, "certainly that's not the administration's view, and we think such comments are inappropriate and counterproductive," but what's missing in the statement, of course, is a denial that anyone in the Obama administration called Netanyahu chicken blank.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Well, you and I know Jeffrey Goldberg. He wouldn't be making that up. Someone obviously used that word to describe the prime minister of Israel. The question is who used that word. Jeffrey Goldberg isn't saying who that official is. I have no doubt that there was some official who used that word.

Look, as you and I know and a lot of our viewers know, there has been a tense relationship, a personal relationship between the prime minister of Israel and the president of the United States. Having said that, the U.S.-Israeli relationship on the whole, the military to military relationship, the intelligence cooperation, all of that has been very strong, even though these two guys from time to time, they're both pretty strong-willed, they don't necessarily get along. You remember the time, you were probably still covering the White House, when Netanyahu was in the Oval Office, and he seemed to be lecturing the president of the United States, and you can see that President Obama was clearly irritated by that little speech he got there.

TAPPER: I think it's fair to say that the respect that they have for each other knows bounds. We can put it that way.

BLITZER: Having said that, I will say one thing. The president keeps making the point he's met over these six years with no leader more than with the prime minister of Israel. They've had more personal meetings together, the president with Netanyahu, than any other of the world leaders.

TAPPER: Let's talk about the domestic politics here about this. Obviously there have been snipes that Israelis have made about Obama off the record that have played to different constituency groups in Israel, but this comes just a few days before an election where pro- Israel voters, whether Jews in Florida or evangelicals in South Carolina or Arkansas, I mean, there are groups that this could be used against the Democrat if Republicans choose to do so.

BLITZER: Yes. If they want to do that, and if they want to go ahead and say this president is, quote, anti-Israel or something like that, that could obviously have an impact. But I think most of the voters, whether evangelical Christians on Jewish voters out there, they are going to look at the respective senatorial, gubernatorial, congressional candidates, and make a decision if this is an important issue to them, the U.S.-Israeli relations, they'll look at the individual candidate as opposed to looking to the president of the United States. And the White House did put out a statement that the support for Israel of this administration in the United States is unwavering.

TAPPER: You'll be talking about this.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Marie Harf, the State Department deputy spokeswoman, she will be joining us, so we'll ask her about these U.S.-Israeli relations, and we will also talk about ISIS. We also have General Ray Odierno, the Army chief of staff is joining us live. We'll talk to him about what's going on with ISIS, the war against ISIS, also U.S. troops in West Africa.

TAPPER: Sounds like a great show. "The Situation Room" is coming up in 18 minutes. Wolf Blitzer, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

When we come back, more than $200 million lost in an instant after this rocket exploded seconds after takeoff. Are private companies really ready to take on space travel? Plus, it's a little more exciting than what you usually see them doing on C-SPAN. Two U.S. senators, a Democrat and a Republican, stranded on an island together. Which one do you think has better survival skills?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. The Money Lead now, a nearly $2 billion contract with NASA up in flames? A rocket blowing up just moments after liftoff last night. Let's take another look. Everything appears to be normal until this moment.

(VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Boom. Here we go, the rocket bursting into flames, coming crashing down. Thankfully, no one was hurt, but the unmanned rocket was developed by a private company.

It was carrying supplies and experiments to the crew onboard the International Space Station and while the crew will be able to survive, this explosion might hurt the reputation of the relatively new commercial space industry reigniting a long-fought debate about how much private companies should be involved in exploring the cosmos.

Joining me now to discuss this is Tom Foreman -- Tom.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right now, two private companies, Spacex and Boeing are working under a government contract to build rockets to take humans into space. Not cargo, people. That, coupled with this highly visible launch failure by another firm has absolutely reignited this debate about the whole idea of private companies leading the modern space race.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Zero and liftoff, the final liftoff of Atlantis.

FOREMAN (voice-over): The end of the space shuttle era amid government budget issues in 2011 was the beginning of the fed seriously handing over the reins of space travel. Since then, the global space economies believed to have rocketed to nearly $300 billion a year.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: We will work with a growing array of private companies competing to make, getting to space easier and more affordable.

FOREMAN: Yet, questions have swirled about whether private companies can handle such dangerous work well while watching the bottom line. The first man on the moon welcomed the idea of private efforts.

NEIL ARMSTRONG, FORMER ASTRONAUT, FIRST PERSON TO WALK ON MOON: But having cut my teeth in rockets more than 50 years ago, I am not confident.

FOREMAN: Part of the problem is that space travel is inherently risky. From the late 1950s, until 1999, even with the government firmly in charge the success rate for launches was 91 percent, true most of the failures were in the early years.

But the Antares rocket with just a few flights under its belt had a perfect record until this disaster. NASA is standing by the rocket's creator, Orbital Sciences, which has a nearly $2 billion contract for eight flights to the space station and the company is vowing --

FRANK CULBERTSON, ORBITAL SCIENCES CORPORATION: We will not fly until we understand the root cause and the corrective action necessary to ensure this doesn't happen again.

FOREMAN: Industry defenders insist no data proves privatized space flight is uniquely dangerous.

ERIC STALLMER, PRESIDENT, COMMERCIAL SPACEFLIGHT FEDERATION: It's a very imperfect science. Rocketry, it's not easy and if it was easy, everyone would be doing it.

FOREMAN: Still, critics say private companies make decisions differently than governments. Orbital, for example, uses refurbished Russian rocket engines, one of which failed during a test just this spring and another of which was pushing that rocket skyward when everything went to pieces.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOREMAN: And trust me, the debate over those Russian engines has just been raging on the internet today. Money is driving all of this. Not only do these companies stand to make millions in profit, but the government has really lost its appetite for the cost of space travel on the public dime. In 1966, at the height of the space race, NASA accounted for 4.5 percent of the federal budget and today, Jake, it is less than one-half of 1 percent.

TAPPER: That's staggering.

FOREMAN: The government will not pay for it. The private industry has to if we'll go into space.

TAPPER: Tom Foreman, thank you so much. Coming up, a river of burning, molten lava now within feet of a dozen American homes. We'll get a bird's-eye view. Our own Martin Savidge is up in a helicopter right now. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back to "THE LEAD." I'm Jake Tapper. In another politics news, for any of you who ever wished that you could just ship lawmakers to a deserted island, well, congratulations, you got your wish.

In a new Discovery Channel show called rival survival, one Democratic senator and one Republican senator get dropped off on a deserted island where they are expected to actually work together to get things done.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're lying again and it's not right.

TAPPER (voice-over): With fierce battles for territory.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're pure talk and you take no action.

TAPPER: Thundering political storms.

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R), KENTUCKY: The Senate has reached a new level of dysfunction.

SEN. HARRY REID (D), MAJORITY LEADER: Senator McConnell and his so- called rule have blocked the majority of the Senate.

TAPPER: And an uncertain fate for its inhabitants, the U.S. Senate is a real jungle this election season.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's as rotten as Martin's ideas on Social Security.

TAPPER: So in an earnest attempt to get out of this political jungle, rival Senators Martin Heinerick and Jeff Flake went to an actual jungle to see if negotiations were any easier there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's what it comes with, stooping down and licking water out of palm fronts.

TAPPER: For its new TV show "Rival Survival," Discovery Channel filmed the duo during their week of isolation, complete with struggles to build shelter to forage for food.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Republicans are better at killing and Democrats are better at eating.

TAPPER: And to achieve compromise.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It brought down the cost of Medicare.

TAPPER: Washington, D.C., is about as far as you can get from the remote Marshal Islands, but the senators say being so far removed helped put things in perspective back home.

SEN. JEFF FLAKE (R), ARIZONA: Your priorities change out there pretty quickly to what's most important and back home in the Senate and what's most important is getting legislation to the floor and actually voting on it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not getting it done on the island is not an option and that's a good perspective to have.

TAPPER: To be fair, these senators actually get along. In fact, it was the lawmakers, not TV executives, who came up with the idea to go where no senators had dared to go before.

BLAKE: It was one of the most effectively kept secrets in Washington. Anybody associated with a member of Congress always looks to protect them from the unforeseen and there are just too many unforeseens here.

TAPPER: One of the hardest parts of their island mission was planning it. BLAKE: Sometimes it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission and this is one of those cases where we felt strongly not only about sort of the adventure, but more importantly about the message that, you know, we can disagree and still work together.

BLAKE: Boy, if you could have found some water I would have voted for any of his bills.

TAPPER: Of course, no one on the ballot this Tuesday would be caught with coconut on his or her face, but some members of Congress may actually learn something from their colleagues' adventures at sea.

BLAKE: Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid, if they were to go there and if they were to survive a week like this together we could really move legislation. If they weren't able to survive, we could move legislation even faster.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: The critics' take on the show, well, about as low as Congress' approval ratings. Many critics say the senators are too darn polite with each other for this to really count as reality TV.

They can now see it, they can now smell it. They can now hear it from their windows. The 2,000-degree lava, searing its way toward a community of 1,000 people on the Big Island of Hawaii that's making everything in its path just disappear.

In the past 24 hours it's even gotten closer and there's nothing anyone can do to stop it from pretty much vaporizing anything it touches. Our Martin Savidge took a trip over the lava flow -- Marty.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Jake, right now you can see that we're going through rain, not uncommon actually on this side of the island. They get about 140 inches a year so we're diverting around the weather, but we're still following lava into Pahoa, and it brings up the point that if the rain can somehow slow it down or have an impact?

It was a question I posed to a volcanologist and he made it clear that rain is not going to have an impact on this, super-heated stone coming from far underground. The lava tends to travel underground anyway. So what's happening on the atmosphere doesn't have much of an impact.

It does help in an indirect way. The vegetation around here remains super saturated so it prevents any kind of major brushfire and that's a good thing. You don't need another disaster on top of the one you're dealing with -- Jake.

TAPPER: Martin Savidge, thank you so much. That's it for "THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. I now turn you over to Wolf Blitzer. He is next door in "THE SITUATION ROOM" -- Wolf.