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Today: House GOP To Meet To Discuss Speaker Vote; Soon: Secretary Of State Blinken To Speak In Israel; NYPD, Jewish Institutions Step Up Security After Ex-Hamas Leader Urges A Show Of "Anger" Friday. Aired 11:30a-12p ET

Aired October 12, 2023 - 11:30   ET

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

[11:30:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: You're looking at live pictures from Tel Aviv. We are waiting to hear from the U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, who is there. He has met with the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

He visited a donation center where he was greeted by swarms of people thanking him for being there, chanting of USA, USA, USA, the singing of the Israeli national anthem. He will take questions from the gathered press there. We expect to hear about what was discussed in the meeting today and also where Blinken is going next, which is hugely significant in many ways.

He will, at one point during this trip, go to Qatar, which is the one nation that may have the most influence over Hamas other than Iran. So, that will be a very interesting meeting as well. Again, we will hear from the Secretary of State very shortly.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: And hearing from him is going to be really important in a moment.

BERMAN: Yes.

BOLDUAN: We're going to bring that to you when it does begin. Also happening today back in the United States, House Republicans are back at it on Capitol Hill. They still have no speaker. Are they any closer to getting there?

Steve Scalise, one the support the Republican nomination if you will -- if you will yesterday behind closed doors. But so far, he definitely seems to be falling short of the full support that he's going to need to actually get enough votes on the floor to take over the job that Kevin McCarthy left.

CNN's Lauren Fox joins us from Capitol Hill. And, Lauren, Kevin McCarthy. He said something -- he's finally now starting to speak out publicly about what is going on with this House Speaker race. What's he saying?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Former House Speaker McCarthy was fairly quiet yesterday as House Republicans gathered to nominate ultimately Steve Scalise to be their speaker designee. But this morning when he arrived on Capitol Hill, I'll let you listen. Here's what McCarthy said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you think it's possible that he can get the votes?

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): Possible. It's a big hill though. he was -- he told a lot of people he's going to be at 150 but he wasn't there, so.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you first seek Jordan?

MCCARTHY: No. The conference -- (INAUDIBLE).

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOX: And you can hear they're not exactly a vote of confidence that Scalise is going to be able to pull this off. And let's just walk through the math a little bit. Yesterday behind closed doors, Steve Scalise got 113 votes to win the nomination on the House floor assuming the Democrats don't provide any help which we never expected that they would.

[11:35:08]

Steve Scalise needs 217 votes to lock down this nomination. Right now, he has more than a dozen Republicans concerned or saying they will not vote for him for the speaker. Some of them saying they will never vote for Steve Scalise. That is part of why McCarthy is arguing this is an uphill climb.

House Republicans are scheduled to meet behind closed doors today at 12:15. That is when some members are hoping that they can get in the room. Figure this out. But I would just point out that Republicans have been in rooms together since Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. They still do not have a speaker that the full conference can rally around.

BOLDUAN: Sir, can you bring out your crystal ball? I mean, sorry, Lauren, can you -- Sara, you do it as well.

SIDNER: Sure. Yes. It's not going to happen today.

BOLDUAN: Lauren, can you bring up your crystal ball? Where is this going to -- where is this headed now? I mean, they need to get a speaker in place. There's no question about that. But time is of the essence like are they going to -- can they take this to the floor and do another 15 rounds?

FOX: Well, this is critically important. And that is really ultimately going to be the decision of Steve Scalise. Does he want to go to the floor and try to grind this out -- fight this out on the floor? There are a lot of Republicans some of whom do not support Steve Scalise saying it's time to go to the floor and see where everyone is and have a full accounting.

If they voted yesterday, they were voting behind closed doors with secret ballots, the argument from some is that it's time to get this moving in front of everyone. Now, the question becomes if you lose so many votes on the floor, how do you come back from that? Obviously, Kevin McCarthy is an example of someone who did 15 rounds and finally got the job.

But ultimately, he stayed in that job for only a matter of months, right? So that is ultimately going to be the decision for Steve Scalise to make. I can guarantee you we're going to get a lot more information coming out of this 12:15 meeting where members are going to be gathered behind closed doors.

BOLDUAN: Really good at meeting these days.

BERMAN: Yes.

BOLDUAN: Not at action, but good at meeting. Good to see you, Lauren. Thank you.

SIDNER: Two words come to mind. Hot. Mess. All right. We're standing by. You're looking at a podium there where Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to speak. We will bring you his remarks as soon as he begins. We'll be right back.

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[11:41:25]

SIDNER: All right. As we just mentioned, House Republicans back out on Capitol Hill, but they still cannot seem to figure out who the speaker is going to be because the votes just aren't there. Republican -- North Carolina Representative Greg Murphy is joining us now. Thank you, sir, for taking some time out. I do want to talk to you about the stakes here --

REP. GREG MURPHY (R-NC): Hi, Sara.

SIDNER: Stakes very high, as you know.

MURPHY: Sure.

SIDNER: Government funding runs out in less than 40 days. You've got one of the U.S. biggest allies, Israel in the midst of a full-scale war.

MURPHY: True.

SIDNER: You've got Ukraine dangerously low on munitions according to the Pentagon. How long is this going to take? Because the House is paralyzed right now.

MURPHY: Sure.

SIDNER: How long do you see this taking before you're able to get a speaker in place?

MURPHY: Well, we're going to have a meeting at 12:15 today, and I think Speaker nominee Scalise is going to basically say, all right, let's lay the cards out on the table and see what the grievances are. He's had several different discussions with people.

You know, Steve won yesterday. And Jim was an -- is an excellent individual but Steve was the nominee. So, you know, this may take a while. You know, we have now a 24-hour news cycle.

And these things like, you know, have happened before. This is how the sausage is made. And so here we are, it's bound -- it's absolutely a difficult situation we're in. I hope -- I hope we get to something -- we get something resolved today.

SIDNER: I know you put on X formerly known as Twitter that this is a 24-hour news cycle that is -- destroyed Congress.

MURPHY: Yes.

SIDNER: We have Dems and Republicans chasing cameras rather than doing the business of the people. But you are here with us in front of the camera.

MURPHY: Yes.

SIDNER: Can you tell us who you support for a speaker?

MURPHY: At this point in time, Scalise is our nominee and I support him.

SIDNER: OK. So, you support Scalise. I want to read you a little something here, you know. In the votes -- if the votes were cast today, Scalise, as you mentioned, would not likely win because he has plenty of detractors.

MURPHY: Sure.

SIDNER: One of whom talked to our Kate Bolduan. I want to let you listen to that. I apologize. We don't have that. But I do want to talk to you about this, another of your colleagues.

Before Mr. Scalise entered Congress, he delivered a speech to a white supremacist group founded by former Ku Klux Klan member, David Duke. And he said I'm David Duke, without the baggage. And that is why Nancy Mace -- Representative Mace said that she couldn't bring herself to vote for him initially.

What do you do about that racist stain on his record? What do you think about that? And is it something that you feel like the public can forgive?

MURPHY: Well, I think Mrs. Mace is a little bit unfortunate because she sure took his money and his support during her other races. You know, let's just put it this way. There are some individuals that are trying to push this crisis for every fundraising dollar that they can get.

We've seen that type of behavior both on the Republican and Democrat side. It's unfortunate because the American public sees these things as unprofessional. And it's a bad name on Congress.

I hope we have some people that grow up here. Yes, here, I'm on camera. I don't chase it. I'm on -- not on 15 programs a day. But we have those individuals who feel like their word is greater than others in Congress, again, on both Republican and Democrat sides.

We have to remember this is a team sport. It's not an individual sport. This is a team sport. And individuals need to know that. So --

SIDNER: Yes. To be fair to you, I do not see you on 15 different shows a day, I see you once or twice, talking about the important issues here. I do -- I do want to lastly, ask you about this. Another of your Republican colleagues, Michael McCaul from Texas said this. The world is watching.

MURPHY: Sure.

[11:45:06]

SIDNER: And they're seeing a dysfunctional democracy here in the United States. And that is what the Ayatollah of Iran wants. That is what Chairman Xi wants to say that democracy does not work.

MURPHY: Absolutely.

SIDNER: And he said in his last visit -- that last bit is important. We need to prove them wrong here in America. Do you worry that this is just one more thing that diminishes the U.S. position in the world right now?

MURPHY: Oh, yes, I think. You know Winston Churchill said democracy is the worst form of government in the world except all the others. Yes, it doesn't diminish us.

I think what has diminished us honestly, is you go back to Afghanistan when Biden began his with disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. That is one of the tenure. That is one of the views of American foreign policy especially has gone downhill.

I adamantly believe Ukraine started because of the vacuum that was seen in Afghanistan. And now, we've seen other things that have gone off worldwide because of the incompetency, I believe of the Biden administration in foreign affairs.

You know, six billion dollars was given just a few weeks ago to Iran for "humanitarian person -- purposes." We all know that that money is fungible and can be used for whatever. It's just a different thing.

You know, it's one thing to have an outlook that everybody should be happy and getting along, wouldn't would -- wouldn't it be wonderful to live in a world like that? But that's just not the reality when we deal with evil regimes, you know, Iran, China, North Korea. And so, we have to be strong about that. Yes, democracy is messy, especially again with a 24-hour news cycle. But this is what happens, and I still believe this is the greatest form of government.

SIDNER: Critics of the Republican -- former President Donald Trump would say that some of the deterioration came down to Trump being a skeptic of NATO, Trump getting close to, you just talked about North Korea, the leader of North Korea and treating him as an equal as opposed to a nemesis. But there are lots of arguments being made. And the most important thing right now is that Congress gets it together and is able to function. We hope that that happens soon. Greg Murphy, thank you so much for taking a bit of time to speak with me today.

MURPHY: Yes. All right, Sara, have a great day.

SIDNER: I appreciate your time. You, too.

MURPHY: Thank you.

SIDNER: John.

BERMAN: You know, he doesn't do a dozen shows every day, but he does the important one. All right. On high alert. Security officials warning about potential threats of anti-Semitic violence in the United States. That is in the wake of the Hamas attacks on Israel.

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[11:51:54]

BOLDUAN: We're showing you live pictures right here. This is out of Tel Aviv. Secretary of State Tony Blinken. He is going to be speaking shortly as he has been on the ground since this morning to meet with leaders of Israel including the prime minister.

And also as we saw, he stopped by a donation -- a donation point, where he met with quite a lot of people, in those moments that we brought to you throughout the show. He's also continuing his -- I wouldn't even call it a tour but an important -- I would call it a mission in the Middle East. While he was in -- while he was in Tel Aviv this morning, he's declared his unwavering support for Israel. And while overseas as we've just learned this morning, he's also going to be adding a stop in Qatar, noteworthy considering Qatar's strong ties to Hamas.

CNN's Alex Marquardt joins me now for more on this. Alex, what are you hearing about this new stop added to the itinerary?

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kate, I think this really does speak to what a high priority this is for the Biden administration, how fluid things are, how important this is for America's top diplomat. You know, Kate, as far as these trips are concerned, they're usually planned long in advance. This one certainly was not because this is such a -- this is such an important -- such a fluid situation with Israel on the cusp of an invasion of Gaza. We all only learned a couple of days ago that Blinken would be going to Israel and Jordan. And then only today that he will be going on to Qatar. And it really does speak to the fact that the Biden administration and Blinken in particular, are reaching out to really anybody who can help and help with a variety of issues that both Israel and the U.S. are now facing.

When it comes to Qatar, you're absolutely right. The focus there is Hamas. Hamas leaders have been hosted by Qatar for years. They live in the capital, Doha. Ismail Haniyeh is one of the top Hamas leaders. He's been living in Qatar for a very long time.

We reported several days ago that Qatar has been helping specifically when it comes to speaking with Hamas about those hostages. We know from the Israelis around 150 hostages. So, that is something that the U.S. hopes Qatar can help with. And there's always the possibility, Kate, that Blinken could then tack on other regional stops because there are other countries that can also help with this quickly evolving situation. Kate.

BOLDUAN: Alex, it's good to see you as always. We're going to bring you Tony Blinken when he begins in Tel Aviv and hear what his message is now, as he continues. This is a live look. We're going to bring you his remark when he begins.

BERMAN: All right, new this morning. The NYPD is stepping up security after a former Hamas leader encouraged protesters to show anger at demonstrations tomorrow. All officers must report in uniform as a precaution. That's according to an internal memo obtained by CNN. There will be extra security around police precincts and other sensitive areas.

With us now is Javed Ali. He's a former senior director of counterterrorism at the National Security Council. And it's been interesting over the last 24 hours to hear from the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and then the Secretary of State Anthony Blinken compare Hamas to ISIS. Why do you think they are making that comparison? What's the significance here?

[11:55:08]

JAVED ALI, FORMER SENIOR DIRECTOR ON COUNTERTERRORISM, NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL: So, John, thanks for having me. And the language about ISIS that we're now hearing, I think, is a reflection of the tactics that Hamas used in these devastating attacks over the weekend. And previously, Hamas was a violent terrorist organization and directed a number of attacks against Israel and inside Israel. But these Commando assaults, the wanton and indiscriminate murder of civilians, the kidnappings, and all the other terrible atrocities that are coming to light now.

Hamas had previously never done things like that. And these are things that we had seen ISIS do in Iraq and Syria going back several years in 2010. So, I think that's why the ISIS terminology is coming up now.

BERMAN: And now they have hostages, maybe more than one hundred hostages in Gaza. What's the significance there?

ALI: This is going to be an incredibly difficult part of the next phase of the Israeli military operation because any hostage rescue effort or recovery effort for even one person just takes an inordinate amount of planning, and intelligence to find the location of that person or persons, and then the military force that you need that is trained and specialized enough to go in and get the hostage out or get the person out.

So, if it's that difficult and complex for one person, and there's numerous examples of that complexity throughout recent history, both Israel and the United States, imagine what it's going to be like for dozens of people, and whether they're in Gaza or other places. So, this is going to be just such a dangerous component of that particular phase of the operation. And no one knows how that will play out going forward.

BERMAN: I do want to ask you about something that happened just within the last hour, which is the Israeli Prime Minister's Office, Benjamin Netanyahu, they released three photos of which we showed one on TV, we're not going to show it again, just now, of a dead baby. A baby killed in the Hamas attacks. The Prime Minister's Office releasing this so people can see the horror of what happened. For Hamas, when they see that photo being published around the world, what is the impact on them?

ALI: So, this goes back to the ISIS style of savagery of these Hamas attacks. And again, they -- in the past, they didn't go to this level of just wanting brutality. So -- and it seems based on the reporting that's coming out about these terrible atrocities is that this was a deliberate part of this assault plan. And the question is, why?

Why is Hamas choosing -- or why did they choose to do that now knowing the global outrage it would cause and the heavy response that Israel was going to inflict on Hamas? And are they prepared for that? Did they -- did they not think through the implications?

Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. But from just an operational perspective, Hamas has never done that in the past. And now they are going to pay a heavy price on top of all the other terrible things that happened over the weekend.

BERMAN: We have about 30 seconds left. Thomas Friedman wrote that maybe Israel should do the opposite of what Hamas wants right now. And his suggestion was what Hamas wants is an Israeli what he calls overreaction in Gaza. So, how do you, if you're the Israelis and there are pictures of dead babies do the opposite, of what Hamas wants?

ALI: Well, again, this is another thing that has to be thought through. If Hamas did this on purpose or you know conducted these atrocities on purpose to lure the Israeli military into Gaza, that's a possibility. And one would think that Hamas has had time to prepare and plan for that and there are probably booby traps, improvised explosive devices, and mines, Gaza might be an incredibly difficult operating environment for the IDF once this invasion kicks off. So, that's going to be another component that has to be managed. BERMAN: Javed Ali, wonderful discussion. Thank you so much for helping us understand everything that we're seeing right now. Sara?

ALI: Thank you there.

SIDNER: Thank you, sir. There is so much noise and vitriol around this war and the intractable Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But we're hoping beyond hope that we can all recognize the searing trauma and destruction of life occurring to the most innocent among us. The children suffer the consequences of the actions of adults.

These are graphic and disturbing pictures. I'm sorry that we're showing them to you, but it is the aftermath here of a terror attack by Hamas. And Israel, the entire country is grief-stricken. Today, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released horrifying photos of babies murdered and burned by Hamas. We are just showing you one of the three photos that showed two babies whose bodies had been burned beyond recognition. And that third photo that we have been showing you of an infant's body that was lying dead, bloodstained.

[12:00:00]

In Jerusalem, there was a family mourning a 23-year-old soldier killed in a battle with Hamas. You can see the sorrow on their faces as they bury him. In Gaza, a humanitarian crisis is growing by the hour. Hundreds of thousands displaced, more than a thousand killed, and children among them.

There is an image shared from the Gaza Health Ministry. That is in a hospital. You see a child lying there with burns on his legs. Children are injured following Israeli airstrikes on a refugee camp there in Gaza. Even those who are trying to save others are themselves dying. We want to show you the members of the Palestinian family that are grieving a child. You're seeing the devastation before your eyes.

BERMAN: All right, thank you so much for being with us. "INSIDE POLITICS" picks up next.