Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

Protests Erupt in Lebanon; Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) is Interviewed about Israel; House Convenes for Second Vote; Fred Upton is Interviewed about the Speakers Race. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired October 18, 2023 - 09:30   ET

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

[09:30:00]

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: What things look like in places like Beirut and in places like Jordan in comparison to what we are seeing now because Jordan also has a huge number of Palestinians that live in Jordan and have reacted in a very big way to what has happened in Gaza. All of these protests coming, of course, after a hospital was struck by someone. We do not know who at this point in time. We have not independently confirmed any of it. But Israel blaming Islamic Jihad and, of course, Hamas blaming Israeli airstrikes.

Can you give us some sense of just context of what we are seeing now in neighboring countries to Israel?

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, what we're seeing is it's boiling over. The anger that people have been watching very closely, intensely what's going on in Gaza. There's been scattered protests. But certainly yesterday I think that anger boiled over. It boiled over in Amman, where protesters went to the Israeli embassy, set fires around it, tried to get in but were pushed back by Jordanian police.

In Ramallah, Ramallah is a particularly important city - place. It's essentially the capital of the Palestinian Authority. There we saw protesters clashing with Palestinian security forces. The protesters were condemning what is happening in Gaza. But in addition to that, they were calling for the downfall of Mahmoud Abbas, the 87-year-old president of the Palestinian Authority who many Palestinians see as ineffectual. He's been passive during this current war. He doesn't seem to have any sway with the Israelis who don't respect the system of zones, areas that exist in the West Bank, where in theory the Palestinian authority is supposed to be in control, but the Israeli security forces go in as they please without any coordination with the Palestinians.

In short, it's a very shaky regime in the West Bank and much of the anger, in addition to being directed at Israel, is directed at what is seen as a corrupt and ineffectual Palestinian authority.

Sara.

SIDNER: Really good reporting. Really good context.

Thank you so much, Ben Wedeman, for being there on the ground.

Are you still hearing some munitions it sounds like behind you?

WEDEMAN: Scattered, yes, but at the -- this very moment, no.

Sara.

SIDNER: OK. OK.

All right, keeping you and your crew as safe as possible in these difficult conditions. Thank you, Ben.

Kate, I'm going to go ahead and send it back to you.

I just want to mention, we are watching these live pictures. An extraordinary number of people who have come out to the streets. This is in Beirut. We are watching this live. People reacting. So upset to see what has happened, particularly in the hospital strike that has, according to Hamas, killed hundreds of people, including, obviously, patients, men, women and children.

Kate.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, the anger and outrage that was sparked last night is spreading like wildfire, as we can see, continuing today. We're going to continue to watch these live pictures. We're going to get back to Sara in Tel Aviv shortly.

Coming up, President Biden says that he was shown evidence, data is how he put it, from the U.S. Defense Department about the deadly hospital blast in Gaza, giving him the confidence, he says, to say that Israel was not behind that deadly blast.

Democratic Congressman and Iraq War veteran, Seth Moulton, joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:38:16]

BOLDUAN: This is video from moments ago. And what you're looking at is what is unfolding in Beirut, Lebanon, where protests are picking back up once again -- you see fire burning there -- sparked by outrage over the deadly explosion outside the hospital in Gaza.

Now, this morning, in Israel, we are standing by to hear from President Biden once again. Already this morning, after he touched down, he reiterated -- he has reiterated U.S. support for Israel. And CNN also has new reporting just in that President Biden said behind closed doors he was shown data from the Pentagon that gave him the confidence to say Tuesday's deadly blast at the Gaza hospital was not carried out by Israeli forces. Hamas quickly blamed Israel for the attack after it happened, but Israel has said that it's -- an Islamic Jihad rocket misfired and hit the hospital. CNN cannot independently confirm what caused the blast.

This is messy and this is the reality of where things stand right now.

Joining us right now is Democratic Congressman Seth Moulton. He sits on the House Armed Services Committee. He's also a Marine Corps veteran.

Congressman, thank you so much for taking the time.

REP. SETH MOULTON (D-MA): Good to see you, Kate.

BOLDUAN: We have this new information from President Biden saying behind closed doors that it's the U.S. Defense Department that provided him data that gave him the confidence to say Israel was not behind the deadly blast outside the Gaza hospital, which is, obviously, in conflict to what Hamas is claiming. What are you hearing about this?

MOULTON: Well, look, I'm going to believe an American president and our closest ally in the Middle East, a democratic ally, over a terrorist organization any day of the week. A terrorist organization that has slaughtering civilians written into their organizational charter.

[09:40:02]

We're going to have a classified briefing for the Armed Services Committee today in the House at 2:00 p.m. to hopefully get more details. But it sounds pretty clear that this was not caused by the Israelis. It's a horrific, horrific disaster, but, obviously, we want to find out the truth about what happened.

BOLDUAN: Can you give me information about who's going to be briefing you? Because the question, I think, you need to know -- obviously it's going to be classified, so what comes out is going to be limited, but do you believe that the Department of Defense has -- has data that's going to be able to show this one way or the other where the origins of this rocket and blast came from?

MOULTON: Well, we're watching this conflict very closely. The Defense Department, our intelligence agencies. So, I expect they have a fairly good idea. And, obviously, the president feels confident in his assessment, at least from the reports of what he said. So, I hope to have a better answer after 2:00 this afternoon.

BOLDUAN: An important day. I mean every day in this has been important. This will prove critical, especially after -- and we can show video once again of what we have just this morning of protests, it looks like violent protests, breaking out once again. This morning we're seeing it in Beirut, Lebanon.

But very quickly the news last night of the blast, it spread like wildfire through the Arab world, sparking protests in multiple places. Protesters at one point were trying to break into the U.S. embassy in Beirut. I mean how much do images like this worry you? Can this outrage be calmed down?

MOULTON: Well, we need to get to the truth here. But the bottom line is that wars like this are incredibly messy. And - and one of the things that Israel has to be very careful about going forward is, they have to recognize that they are in a counterinsurgency fight where their actions that they take can not only kill terrorists, but can also recruit more terrorists to the cause. Well, we call this insurgent math. General Stanley McChrystal, famed U.S. general, estimated this as 10 to 1, that for everyone innocent civilian you kill, you recruit about ten terrorists to the cause.

So, Israel is right to try to kill off the leadership of Hamas that perpetrated these heinous, barbaric assaults on Israeli civilians. They need to do that to keep Israel safe. But they also can't recruit more terrorists in the process. That doesn't keep Israel safe either. So, how Israel prosecutes this war and how they're able to avoid civilian casualties is actually incredibly important, not just to Palestinian human rights, but to their own success.

BOLDUAN: You know, something that really does not happen has on many levels, but the president of the United States essentially being canceled on by allies as he's on his way to critical meetings with Jordan and Egypt pulling out of the summit that was planned. How damaging is this? What do you think Biden should do about it in this moment?

MOULTON: Well, look, I mean, it's not damaging to President Biden. He's doing the right thing. He's going, you know, right into the conflict here, and into the conflict zone to try to better understand what's going on. But it is representative of just the dangerousness of this whole conflict in the Middle East and the potential for it to expand into a wider regional war. Part of the reason that President Biden is going to the Middle East is to try to tamp down those tensions, to talk to both our allies and send messages to our adversaries that we can't let this expand further.

HARLOW: Look, you wrote a really compelling piece about essentially lessons learned. And you were touching on it just there, lessons learned from your time in Iraq, decisions by the administration then, what Israel can learn from that. And there are many moments that you write about and also that you witnessed that I wonder if you see this moment, this blast, the explosion, the aftermath, the reaction, the outrage, do you -- could this be a watershed moment in this conflict?

MOULTON: Well, it could be. And you don't know for sure. But think back to that horrible tragedy at Abu Ghraib, the prison in Iraq where detainees were abused by American troops. Now, if you look at that measure, that event in isolation, it didn't seem like it was terrible, but it didn't seem like a huge deal, there weren't a lot of people killed or anything like that, and yet the psychological effect that it had on the whole conflict was massive. When you had civilians killed in Iraq, it had massive effects on the entire war effort. And that is exactly what Israel has to be very careful about here.

Now, if it turns out that Israel didn't kill -- didn't drop the bomb on this hospital, then they can obviously make that case to the world community. You know, but even if they make that case, it's a reality of these counterinsurgency campaigns fighting in an urban environment that innocents are going to get killed. [09:45:07]

And that can actually impact your ability to achieve your mission.

What Israel needs to be very clear here is to articulate, what is their end game? Where is this all going? Because if they just go into Gaza and leave it a smoldering mess, they're going to end up more -- recruiting more terrorists than they killed and they'll be right back to square one. None of us want to see that.

BOLDUAN: Hard lessons learned, definitely, from past U.S. conflicts.

Congressman, thank you so much for your time.

MOULTON: We made a lot of mistakes - we made a lot of mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we want to -- we want to help the Israelis not repeat them.

BOLDUAN: Congressman, thank you.

John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, counting down to a new vote for House speaker, that is if it doesn't get canceled. In the first vote, Republican Jim Jordan fell way shorter than expected. We have new reporting on where he stands at this minute, and the new backup plan being formulated by House Republicans that, by the way, concern that man you're looking at in the bow tie.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BOLDUAN: Very soon this morning the House is set to be back at it and give it a second go. Still trying to elect a new speaker. Jim Jordan scrambling overnight to try to secure more votes and also lose less votes after he failed to win the gavel yesterday.

Twenty members of his own party not backing him. A reminder, with such a slim margin in the House already, Jordan can only afford to now lose four votes if he wants to win the speakership. How far -- is he getting further away from it or closer?

Let's get back to Lauren Fox, who's on Capitol Hill.

What are you hearing today, Lauren?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, we've spoken this morning with Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan. And he is vowing to stay in this race, Kate, despite the fact that, like you said, he lost 20 Republican votes. He could lose even more on a second ballot this morning at 11:00 a.m. when he goes to the floor to continue this fight to become the speaker. But he says he thinks that the answer is to get a Republican speaker. He says, I've gotten 90 percent of the conference. I think I can get there.

Here is what he told me moments ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JIM JORDAN (R-OH): We've got to get a speaker so we can open the House. So, I'm going to get there. Look, I've already proven I can get from the most conservative members of the conference to the more moderate members of the conference. So, that's a whole cross section of the conference. It's important that we get the last -- last few.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOX: And here's what is worth watching today on the House floor, does he actually pick up support?

[09:50:02]

He told me that he hopes so, that he thinks he can get more support. But there are a number of members who are working to try and make sure that the number of members voting against Jordan actually grows today. If that happens, I pressed him on if he'd go to a third ballot or if he would drop out. He did not answer that question specifically. Got on the elevator and left his office.

But one thing to keep in mind today is that Republicans are discussing a potential alternative, which is to bring a resolution to the floor of the House which would empower Patrick McHenry temporarily to bring legislation to the floor, to have the full power of a speaker pro-tem.

Right now, because he was appointed by McCarthy, there's very little he can do on the floor. But a lot of members are losing patience because they're looking around saying this is two weeks into this fight for speaker. We still do not have someone who can get 217 votes. It's time to do something for Israel. It's time to make sure that we don't have a government shutdown on November 17th when the government runs out of money. So, that is why this momentum is gaining around the idea of basically empowering Patrick McHenry.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: I mean talk -- talk about a band-aid, I mean, but also just exposing how far apart they really may be.

It's good to see you, Lauren. Keep us updated.

John.

BERMAN: With us now, former Republican congressman from Michigan, Fred Upton.

Congressman, great to see you. Oh my God, in the beautiful great outdoors there.

Listen, I'm not sure you're going to like this analysis, but some people are looking at the fact that Jordan lost 20 votes yesterday and may lose more today is coming from the fact that moderates, they say, are finally showing some spine, refusing to crumble. Why do you think that is? FRED UPTON (R), FORMER U.S. REPRESENTATIVE: Well, you're exactly

right. I mean if you look at Jordan's track record, he opposed, I think, every single appropriation bill throughout his entire career. He voted against health research. He led the opposition to even an Amber Alert system for active shooters that even the NRA did not oppose. So, it's that kind of -- you know, and in a divided government, you've got to work together. You've got to get things done. The world is afire. I mean not only Israel, but Ukraine. You've got this looming shutdown again that no one wants to go through. We had a budget agreement that was bipartisan last June and people walked away from that, and I think he opposed that as well.

But at the end of the day, you've got to get things done. You've got to get 60 votes in the Senate. You've got to have a president that can sign the bill, not veto it. And, you know, so it's time to get moving. And you're going to have a Republican speaker no matter what. Patrick McHenry is a really able guy. His word is his bond. He's thoughtful. He's intelligent. He could actually, I think, swing a deal with many, if not most of the Republicans.

But from the Democratic side, and I talked to some in the last couple days, I'm sure Lauren and Manu have on your team, we're tired of this. We need a speaker. We need to send the ship forward, not keep it at port in this world that is so troubled today.

So, it's time to get moving. If Jordan loses votes, and I suspect that he will today. I mean it was a little bit of a surprise that there were 20 that were against him. You remember the first time that Kevin ran, when they had the 15 ballot, Kevin McCarthy, there were only 19 Republicans that opposed him. If there's 20 - there were 20 yesterday, if it goes to 25 or so, I think Jordan is going to have to throw in the cards. A big loss for Trump, because, you know, he supported Jordan not only last week, but this week as well. They're making calls. Hannity's making calls. I don't think it's going to happen. It's time to turn the page and get a captain of the ship.

BERMAN: There is this e-mail that's being circulated, text messages, Congressman Don Bacon from Nebraska, one of the people who voted against Jim Jordan yesterday, released these text messages that his wife got.

UPTON: Yes.

BERMAN: One of them said, "your husband will not hold any political office ever again. What a disappointment and failure he is."

What does it tell you that there's that kind of lobbying effort?

UPTON: Yes. Well, it's really nasty. And I would guess that there were even more brutal calls and texts that probably the FCC would ban you from allowing to be on the air. I was the victim of that when I was one of those that supported impeachment.

There's a nasty public out there and, you know, that's one of the things that Jordan's people have done, his supporters, I should say, not -- hopefully not him. But they've organized this attack group from all different cycles and it's, you know, it's -- I guess it's part of public life these day, but it's a - it's a really bad turn.

[09:55:00]

And Bacon, to his credit, released it just to show the pressure that he was under. But all those 20, there was enormous pressure. They were -- they were breaking arms and legs trying to get the votes that they did. And I think a number of my former colleagues are saying enough of this junk - they've got a different word for it -- enough of this junk, let's move on and stop these awful threats that are imposed, particularly on family members, but as well as staff. I mean they're the victims of this, too. The calls that come into the offices.

BERMAN: Well, the vote will happen in about an hour from now if they limp in on their broken legs and cast their votes with their twisted arms.

UPTON: Yes. Yes. They're look (INAUDIBLE).

BERMAN: Fred Upton, we appreciate you joining us this morning. Thank you very much.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: Coming up for us, the new warning from the World Health -- the head of the World Health Organization, that the situation in Gaza is spiraling out of control. Hospitals running out of supplies. Supplies are still stuck at the border with Egypt. And now confusion and anger over the deadly blast outside the Gaza hospital last night. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIDNER: I'll talk to you in a minute in the break.

All right, any moment now President Biden is expected to speak in Israel again after a series of meetings that he had with the Israeli prime minister, his war cabinet and the families of people impacted by the Hamas attack. We want to tell you right now we are seeing Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has come into that room. You see the room set up there with all the reporters waiting for President Biden to show up.

You know, look, he's already faced questions at this point in time about that deadly explosion at the Al Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza that, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, run by Hamas, that hundreds of people were killed in a place that is supposed to be set aside for healing. It has disturbed everyone in the world, but in particular it has caused major protests in the neighboring countries.

There is a huge protests ongoing right now in Beirut, in particular. There have been protests in Jordan, in Amman, Jordan, right across the way. So, this is really causing a lot, a lot of disturbance, as you might imagine. People are very upset.

As to who is responsible for it, there is still -- we cannot confirm or verify any of the information at this point, but Israel says it has proof that it was not responsible, that it wasn't from an air strike. They have some recordings that have been put out of what they say is Islamic jihadists who accidentally misfired and their rocket hit the hospital.

Let us now go to Kaitlan Collins, who is following all of this and the president's visit.

Kaitlan, you know, you look at what is happening right now and the situation that we're in.

[09:59:58]

This is probably, except for October 7th, the most tense it has been here in this country because of that attack, or that misfire, whichever one it is, on the hospital.