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Mixed GOP Reaction to House Benghazi Report; Escalating Altercations Between Cops and Blacks; Greatest NFL Catch Ever?

Aired November 24, 2014 - 07:30   ET

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

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: So beyond that spin, which is what that is, that the administration was trying to figure out a way to spin this for their narrative - beyond that, are you satisfied that this report is definitive and that this was, as you started by saying, just a terrible tragedy?

BEN FERGUSON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, it's certainly an important piece of the puzzle, but I also look at this with a large asterisk, and that's this. Mike Rogers, who's in charge of helping with this report, is about to leave. He needs every one of his contacts in the intelligence community for him to be able to continue his career inside politics, but on the outside looking in. You don't burn these bridges. He's a former FBI guy.

I think part of this report looks at this protecting your own friends and allies instead of looking at it for what it really is. This wasn't an intelligence failure. You don't have an American ambassador killed.

You don't have this many cables coming beforehand on the anniversary of 9/11. That's one of the things I think we saw early on from the reports came in, literally, within eight hours after this report.

It was obvious from their assessment that on the anniversary of 9/11, this was a terrorist attack, and that should have been the narrative from the very beginning.

CAMEROTA: Look, I hear what you are saying, is that you think the chairman, Mike Rogers, isn't pulling punches in some regards, but there are all sorts of other Republicans on this select committee. Congressman Peter King, Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, Max Thornberry of Texas. These are not people who are known as Benghazi apologists.

FERGUSON: What I'm saying is this report specifically and only deals with the intelligence community. It does not deal with Susan Rice directly. It does not deal with Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton, for example, was never even looked at by this committee or even asked her to testify.

So to act as if this is some all-encompassing report that many have been talking about would be incredibly naive to look at this way. This was an intelligence report about the intelligence of this attack during and after and one thing it makes clear is that the narrative from the White House was absolutely thought that this was a spontaneous protest.

This was two months be every the election. They knew they need to change the words. You have top advisers saying please change the words from terrorist attack to you know, abnormal activity that was spontaneous to cover and make sure it doesn't look, and I use their words, a failure in policy.

CAMEROTA: Ben, very quickly, as you know, there is a seventh governmental report, an investigation that will come out. It is being spearheaded by Trey Gowdy, at that point, when the Trey Gowdy findings come out, will Republicans say that that is the definitive word and will they move on?

FERGUSON: I think there is a very good chance of that because the Trey Gowdy report is looking at all of it. The Trey Gowdy report is looking at Hillary Clinton, looking at the State Department, looking at the White House. Not just the one aspect of the intelligence community.

So I think that is going to be a much bigger narrative. I'm glad that they have this report to look at. I'm also glad that it says early on that we did not have a stand down order.

I'm glad that it looks early on that there were men and women who are incredibly brave at the annex that says regardless of waiting, we are going -- we will save men and women including our ambassador. They understood it was a terrorist attacks.

Gowdy understands a terrorist attack and they understand there is a lot of language that changed between the attack time and what the White House was telling us, which is spontaneous and it wasn't.

They even knew that there were less than 70 guys on the ground that morning and they had large arm fire, RPGs and mortars. That's not a protest. That's a terrorist attack on the anniversary of 9-11 in the Middle East.

CAMEROTA: Ben Ferguson, thanks, so much for your perspective. Always great to see you.

FERGUSON: Good to talk to you.

CAMEROTA: Let's go over to Chris.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: A grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri, may decide the fate of Officer Darren Wilson and the shooting of Michael Brown as soon as today. Now I didn't mention race.

But to many the key here is a white man shot an unarmed black man and killed him and may not be punished. Again, just this weekend word of yet another fatal incident between a police officer and a young black man, a 12-year-old, is again fuelling this outrage.

So let's take on the obvious. Coming up, is this more than circumstance? Is it simply unequal justice?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: Ferguson matters, it matters because of the need for justice, regardless of the outcome by the grand jury and because the killing of a black man by a white man is something that is perceived as something that is not punished often enough.

Over the weekend, protests in New York City following the killing of a 28-year-old by a rookie coup in a dark stairwell unarmed. The NYPD is calling it an accident.

A 12-year-old boy, black, shot and killed in Cleveland Saturday after police say he was waving a gun. The gun turned out to be a toy on a 911 call, the person calling it in, suspected it was a toy, it had that orange piece that says it's a toy removed.

So are these cases getting more attention or are the numbers up in altercations between cops and young men of color? What can we do about it? Let's discuss it.

Political commentator, Charles Blow and we have Don Lemon, CNN anchor, of course. Gentleman, thank you, Don, especially to you because I know it's freezing there, thanks for being a part of this.

It's worth it. This is an important conversation. Let's play what Rudy Giuliani, an esteemed member of our society and a lawman had to say on this issue.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUDY GIULIANI, FORMER MAYOR OF NEW YORK: I find it very disappointing that you're not discussing the fact that 93 percent of blacks in America are killed by other blacks. We are talking about the exception here. I'd like to see the attention paid to that, that you are paying to this. What about the poor black child that was killed by another black child? Go to that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I do protest that. I'm a minister, they go to jail. Why don't you talk about the way in which white --

GIULIANI: Why don't you pipe down, so why don't you cut it down so many white police officers don't have to be in black areas?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: It's something usually not said by powerful people on television, which is his perception that, the cops wouldn't have to be there if you guys weren't doing so much bad stuff. At the end of the day, Charles, that's what the mayor was saying, right?

CHARLES BLOW, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Right. Understand even in the question and what the mayor is saying, what does this mean, like you guys, so much, it is I can only understand it to be what I assume it to be is racist on his face.

CUOMO: I am putting it that way. BLOW: I'm not saying you. I'm saying you take even Chicago with the tremendous amount of attention lately. It wasn't the murder capital of the world, not by a long shot. It had a really high murder rate, highly concentrated in African-American neighborhoods.

Yale took a look at that and found that 70 percent of all those murders were conducted by 6 percent of the population. They looked at just a six square mile area where the murders were heavily concentrated.

What happens to the other 94 percent of those people? What are we saying to them when people like Rudy Giuliani say you people just need to handle it, deem with it, or you have to accept some level of collateral damage in this battle that we are conducting.

CUOMO: He's pointing out --

BLOW: Those are extraordinary things.

CUOMO: He is saying you have to take responsibility for it. That's what he's saying.

BLOW: He is saying you are making noise about. That you go to Chicago. People are marching, setting up zones to walk kids home from school. They are making all kind of noise about that.

The idea the perception that people in Chicago did not in their own communities say enough is enough, can we do stuff? What people are saying, though is, we don't want to have the fight the criminals and the cops.

We don't want to have the perception. We don't want to lose more faith in this current justice system that it will not treat people fair.

CUOMO: OK, so Don, here's the truth. Rudy is saying, you guys have to take care of your own business, a little bit more than the cops don't have to be there. That's what he's saying. I don't what Charles let's unpack it, though.

Don, here is the truth. OK, Rudy is saying, you guy versus to take care of your own business a little bit more. The cops don't have to be there. That's what he is saying. The numbers say, people kill people who look leak they do.

Blacks don't kill each other more than whites do, really. It's 93 percent blacks kill blacks, 86 percent whites kill whites. It's about proximity. But how do we not understand this yet? What does it go to, in your opinion, Don?

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR, "CNN TONIGHT": I think most rational people do understand that whites kill whites, blacks kill blacks. That's how it works. I think Rudy Giuliani didn't say it right. I think the way he said it, it came off as racist.

Had he said as I spoke to a police officer last night, and said, you know, Don, the numbers are the numbers. If you look at the raw numbers, police are in certain neighborhoods, which many times happen to be African-American neighborhoods or Hispanic neighborhoods, or whatever, just because the crime numbers in that area.

Had he not and I was very surprised as a leader after a major city for him to say, you people, you guys, those sorts of things? Does he have a point when it comes to taking responsibility? We all do, that doesn't just go for black people.

But it's also very important how you say it especially as a leader. So I think that we need to talk about how we prevent crime in all areas. Charles is right. I think Michael Dyeson is right as well.

There are people do discuss crime in black areas. People are outraged by crimes in black areas. You don't hear about it as much in the news. It's not sexy so to speak, for lack of a better word.

If there is a police involved, yes, if there is a police-involved shooting, it gets all the attention and people tune in.

BLOW: Michael made a good point, which was this, you know, if you can turn the glove inside out and you can demonstrate to me that there are black people killing other black people and the black person, we know they shot the person, we know where they are.

Still they did not get a charge. They did not get locked up. They did not go through the criminal justice whatsoever. They did not get locked up. If you can show me that in the same percentages then I will say it is fair --

CUOMO: But should it be the same percentages? When police officers get involved with young black me, let's generalize on that level. Do you think those numbers should relate the same, arrest ratio as when black civilians shoot other black civilians?

BLOW: Let's take it further, let's say all police shootings, should be, if they were truly equitable, you would have relative numbers of white people killed by police and black people killed by police. But that is not what the data show.

CUOMO: They report the amount of crime.

BLOW: These people are not the people who are necessarily committing the crimes. A lot of these people, we see unarmed people. If you say you are shooting somebody in the commission of a crime. It is a different animal than a boy sitting in a swing with a gun. I'm sorry. It's a whole different animal.

We cannot mix these two things up together, say the people, a, listen, the other 94 percent who are not involved in these crimes have to pay some price because a small percent annual of people are not involved.

CUOMO: It's not OK by any stretch of the imagination?

BLOW: You talk about training. You got to talk about training in the community, what type of person is in the community. Listen, again, after knowing I was going to do this, being here on this story, I have been speaking to a lot of people I know in police departments.

They say, listen, Don, you have to realize the broader community looks at it as we are racist guy, we don't go to work every day saying we are going to shoot unarmed people or a black person. We go -- we want to go home to our families.

In many cases it's very tough to find police officers that have the same racial makeup as a community. Then have you people who are rookie police officers that need more training, they're scared. They go into communities. They don't know the people, they're just afraid. Many times they react poorly. I'm not making an excuse for it.

CUOMO: They are scared, period, no matter who they have to deal with.

BLOW: Why does a person who looks like me scare you more than a person who looks like you, and if you don't understand that, if you don't put that into context?

CUOMO: You don't scare me.

(CROSSTALK)

CUOMO: Hold on one second, I hear you, but Charles, black cops do it, too.

BLOW: What I'm telling you is that when you have a culture that demonized black people, we all absorb it. I live in the society, too, if the black cops absorb it as much as the white cops. I'm not saying either of those absorption or the distortion of the black image or the image of the black body in particular black men, it is wrong.

We have to look at it and say I'm not saying you are going out to do something racist, to do something bad, who is there to shoot someone, no one is saying that. What I'm saying is when we look at these numbers.

Black people are far more likely to be shot by police than white people. You look at the idea that the people are more afraid of people who look like me than look like you that is the problem. It is the final problem. It is not an individual problem. You can't ask enough people. Some of it is implicit. It is not an explicit suggestion.

CUOMO: So that it doesn't find its end in how we police either. It goes far beyond that.

BLOW: I'm not saying it's important. I think it's important. Training mitigates this idea. We have an arbitrary conversation. We have social sciences, they have conducted experiments and given people guns and said fake guns and said, one of these guys has a gun. One doesn't. People in the general public are more likely to shoot the black person with the gun.

CUOMO: We are out of time.

LEMON: I'm not arguing with you, I think are you right about that. What I'm saying, there needs to be more training, and if you look at it, it doesn't matter, I'm afraid. So if you are as you said, if it's intrinsic in society that people are more afraid, officers may be more afraid of African-Americans, yes, OK, I agree with you on that.

But it's just training. These are young officer who are in communities and they can't find the racial makeup of the community. It's not balanced and they're afraid. It doesn't matter whether it's white or Hispanic. These officers are afraid. These young cops are afraid. They need more training.

BLOW: If are you the person who has taken the oath, who had gone through the training to become the officer. They have given you a gun. You cannot simply lean back on the concept that I am afraid and let that be the guiding principle.

CUOMO: It's not an excuse.

LEMON: It's just a reality, though, it's true, it's a truth. I don't think that they're leaning on that, but that's a part of it. That's a part of the discussion and part of the training that needs to be worked on.

CUOMO: There is no question. It is a big problem. It goes beyond what happens with blacks in the communities, how communities see each other in general and how other communities connect. It's a big conversation. That's why we have to keep having it.

Don, thanks for being with us in the cold. I will be joining you soon. My friend, Charles, always a pleasure. Thank you for keeping this going -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: All right, Chris, on a more fun note, the New York Giants lost to the rival Dallas Cowboys. The Giants' rookie receiver was the winner of the night. The catch you have to see to believe coming up in "Bleacher Report."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: Welcome back. The Cowboys and Giants squaring off on Sunday night football, the game taking a back seat though to what some are calling the greatest catch in NFL history. Andy Scholes has more in this morning's "Bleacher Report." Hi, Andy.

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS: Good morning, Alisyn. Yes, everyone is talking about Beckham Junior's catch this morning. In terms of regular season catches, I think this is the best grab of all time.

Happened first play of the second quarter, Eli Manning going deep for Beckham, and as he's getting pulled down, he reaches back and just makes an insane one-handed catch.

Take a look again, just incredible. Now Beckham said after the game I hope it's not my greatest catch, good luck topping that one, man. Now the Giants were up 21-10 in this one. But Cowboys came back, Alex gets the win, 31-28. All right, Colts wide receiver T.Y. Hilton and his wife had a baby girl early yesterday morning. He was holding his daughter at 11:15 then on the field playing less than two hours later.

Now he promised his new daughter he'd catch a touchdown for her, and sure enough, in the third quarter, Hilton goes 70 yards for the score, and watch this, he cradles the football as if it was his daughter.

Then he tweeted this saying my princess got the game ball today. I promised you a td on your special day. That's cute.

All right, some fans in Detroit waited hours to get their hands on free tickets to tonight's Bills-Jets game. This is with the tickets looked like yesterday morning.

They were gone in just 10 minutes. People who snapped them up online and at the box office are trying to resell them. But most online exchanges like Stubhub and Ticket Masters are not allowing people to resell the free tickets.

Meanwhile in Buffalo, the clean-up continues at the stadium. Crews are working to remove more than six feet of snow before next Sunday when the Bills are scheduled to host the Browns.

And Chris, your Jets taking -- Alisyn's there, Jets taking on the Bills, I wondered if he thought they were going to get a win. Again, two games for Monday night football. You got a double header tonight.

CAMEROTA: Are you trying to give Chris some grief because we don't want to get in the way of that.

SCHOLES: Bills didn't get to practice much last week of all of the snow so the Jets have a competitive advantage tonight. We'll see what happens.

CAMEROTA: Good, he's hearing you and grimacing, so that's great, Andy. Thanks so much. We love the baby included in the "Bleacher Report," great job.

Meanwhile, Ferguson, Missouri, is on edge. Grand jury meets again today after no decision was reached over the weekend on whether to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown. The city and the country are bracing for protests.

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