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Hillary Clinton Mostly Undamaged in 10-Hour Grilling; Strongest Hurricane in History to Slam Mexico; Interview with Representative Mark Sanford; Fireworks Between GOP and Clinton on Capitol Hill. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired October 23, 2015 - 10:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

[10:00:02] CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Plus, he's in. Congressman Paul Ryan is running for speaker. Can he really shake up Congress?

And a U.S. commando killed in a Special Forces raid in Iraq. New details about the dramatic rescue attempt.

Let's talk. Live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: And good morning, I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

Hillary Clinton off the hot seat and back on the campaign trail. Just minutes from now she will address the Democrats' Women's Leadership Forum. It's a far more friendly audience than the Republican-led hearing on Benghazi. After 11 hours of sometimes blistering questions Clinton emerged mostly unscathed.

Senior political correspondent Brianna Keilar live in Washington to tell us more. Good morning.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you, Carol. Well, if Hillary Clinton was in the lion's den yesterday, she's going to her campaign happy place today, I think you could say. She'll be at this Democratic Women's Forum this morning as other candidates are addressing this group. Very friendly audience, as you can imagine.

And then she's going to head across the Potomac River a few miles outside of Washington, D.C. to go to Alexandria, Virginia. This is northern Virginia, it's a Democratic stronghold. She'll hold a campaign event there. So that's certainly I think welcome for her. Her campaign at this point pretty thrilled about how she did yesterday. Republicans of course felt that she was very evasive, but her campaign is really happy, especially feeling that this builds on some of the momentum of her debate performance and also that they kind of dodged a bullet with Joe Biden not getting in the race -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Brianna, I want you to stay with me a minute so I can bring you into a discussion on the Benghazi hearing. Republicans say they walked into yesterday's hearing with two huge

questions -- what did Hillary Clinton know about the deteriorating security in Benghazi and could she have prevented the deaths of four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador?

Even the Republican chairman, a former prosecutor, concedes little was learned.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. TREY GOWDY (R-SC), CHAIRMAN, SELECT COMMITTEE ON BENGHAZI: In terms of her testimony, I don't know that she testified that much differently today than she has the previous times she's testified.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Many Democrats say this is just further proof that the hearing was a political witch hunt. Here are some of the memorable moments.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I really don't care what you all say about me. It doesn't bother me a bit.

REP. MIKE POMPEO (R), SELECT COMMITTEE ON BENGHAZI: I'm not asking what the ARB did. I'm asking what you did.

REP. SUSAN BROOKS (R), SELECT COMMITTEE ON BENGHAZI: Did you ever talk to Ambassador Stevens when all of this was going on in the hot bed of Libya?

CLINTON: Well --

BROOKS: That is a yes or no question, Madam Secretary. I'm sorry.

CLINTON: I believe I did. But I --

BROOKS: And when was that?

CLINTON: I don't recall.

REP. PETER ROSKAM (R), SELECT COMMITTEE ON BENGHAZI: Here's basically what happened to their requests. They were torn up.

REP. ELIJAH CUMMINGS (D), SELECT COMMITTEE ON BENGHAZI: I don't know what we want from you. Do we want to badge you over and over again until you get tired, until we do get the gotcha moment that he's talking about? We're better than that.

CLINTON: I thought more about what happened than all of you put together. I've lost more sleep than all of you put together.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: It has been a momentous 10 days for Hillary Clinton, the presidential candidate. By almost all accounts she emerged from that hearing without any significant missteps. Just the day before on Wednesday, Joe Biden announced he would not challenge her for the nomination. And just last week polls showed that many Americans believed she won the Democratic debate.

So is Clinton riding a new wave of momentum? Here to discuss that and more CNN political director David Chalian and Brianna Keilar joins us again.

David, I want you to put that hearing first, though, into perspective. What did America learn from that?

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Well, I don't know that America was looking for answers quite the same way that the Republicans were looking for answers on this. You learned about Hillary Clinton's tenure at the State Department. You learned about how she conducts business. You learned that when this chaotic, which ultimately ended up to be a tragic event, occurred, you learned sort of her timeline of how she responded to that.

But, Carol, you said put this in context, and you just did. This is in context of a 10-day political run here for Hillary Clinton that is unparalleled to any other 10-day run she has had all year long as a presidential candidate. Nobody can argue that this is the best stretch she has had politically of her entire campaign. Even Carly Fiorina, one of her toughest critics, who has built her entire campaign, basically, on being a Hillary Clinton critic, came out this morning and said, she did reasonably well yesterday.

And now Hillary Clinton has jumped these hurdles that were before her in the month of October and she's sort of got this clear track ahead of her now to try and move beyond these problems that she's had, e- mail, Benghazi hanging over her, and start engendering enthusiasm among Democrats which has sort of been the missing component for her.

COSTELLO: So, Brianna, can Hillary Clinton now put Benghazi in her rearview mirror?

[10:05:01] KEILAR: Well, I don't know that it's ever going to fully be in her rearview mirror in that this is something that motivates a lot of the Republican base, and so presuming that she would be the frontrunner, and right now she's definitely in a better position and more poised to do that with Joe Biden out of the race, I think she's going to be dealing with this issue again. It's something that really riles up the Republican base.

Something that really struck me from this, though, Carol, and I covered Congress for years and I watched many a hearing and I saw a lot of sometimes genuine, sometimes feigned outrage and disdain, was that it seemed pretty genuine here, I think, kind of going both ways. And I think it's a little bit of a preview of what you might see in a general election if Hillary Clinton is the nominee.

There is a lot of -- I think it riles up the base on one hand and I think we'll see that, I also think that it brings some Democratic supporters towards her who feel like she's being targeted unfairly. COSTELLO: All right. I'm going to leave it there. Brianna Keilar,

David Chalian, thanks to you both.

It is being called the strongest hurricane ever recorded and now this potentially catastrophic storm is just hours away from making landfall in Mexico. Officials are evacuating more than 50,000 people ahead of Hurricane Patricia. Forecasters like Chad predict the storm will bring heavy rain, destructive waves and landslides.

So let's head to Chad Myers. He's here to tell us more. Good morning.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Hi, good morning, Carol. If you can think of a name, Camille, Andrew, Katrina, Rita, Wilma, this storm is stronger than every single one. The pressure is lower, the wind speed is higher. 200 miles per hour. And I guess the good news in the story that you just read is that they're evacuating 50,000 people. They're not trying to evacuate three million people because three million people don't live there. This is a sparsely populated area but Manzanillo, Mexico is right in the way.

This town is going to look like Bay, St. Louis, after Katrina went in. We're going to see a 30-foot storm surge coming right into that bay. And that water is going to go up the hill and all of a sudden it's going to rain 18 inches, maybe 20 inches in the mountains and all that water is going to rush right back down into the same place that just had the saltwater flood. The saltwater flood goes away and then the fresh water flood comes in. It comes in probably in eight to 10 hours.

This is -- well up here, Puerto Vallarta right there. Acapulco way down here. So in between those two resort towns, but Puerto Vallarta is still going to get hit. Probably 75 miles per hour with the wind speeds there. Kind of pushing off shore. It's this side, it's the right-hand side, it's the side of Katrina, that was Bay, St. Louis, that was Biloxi, that was Gulf Port, that was all that water, all that storm surge is going to put right on shore and push all that water right into all of those cities, all of those smaller cities. All of those smaller cities.

That's why the evacuation of 50,000 people is so very important. Need to get them away from the water. Get them away from the ocean because that ocean is going to come roaring onshore. And then there'll be waves on top of that storm surge. So we're going to lose buildings in the storm surge and we hope just to get those people out of the way. Buildings can be replaced.

Eventually we get some of this water into North America, into the United States, across Mexico and even -- maybe even some rainfall for parts of Texas, Louisiana, and the Gulf Coast, but not in this form. Not a 200-mile-per-hour storm. It will be gone by then, the wind will be gone but the moisture and the rainfall could still be heavy, even in the U.S.

COSTELLO: All right. Chad Myers, thanks so much.

MYERS: You're welcome.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, Congressman Paul Ryan now says he will, indeed, run for speaker of the House. He says he wants the GOP to start over. Is that possible?

I'll talk to one member of the House Freedom Caucus next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:10:02] COSTELLO: It is official. Paul Ryan is running. He's likely to be speaker of the House next week. Ryan's winning pitch, let's start over. The Wisconsin representative and one time VP candidate says he's ready to reboot and unite the fractured GOP. Releasing this statement last night, quote, "I never thought I'd be speaker but I pledged to you that if I could be a unifying figure, then I would serve. I would go all in."

I guess only time will tell us, they say, if the hard-right can keep making room for compromise and hold Paul Ryan to his promise. So let's talk about this.

I'm joined by the Republican representative from South Carolina, Mark Sanford. Welcome, sir.

REP. MARK SANFORD (R-SC), SOUTH CAROLINA: My pleasure. Thank you.

COSTELLO: Nice to have you here. You're a member of the freedom caucus, the majority of which now will support Ryan as speaker. How did he win them over?

SANFORD: The way he's won the entire conference over. I mean, Paul has a lot of credibility because he's done little things right over the years. He's built up trust with membership. And when he says he's going to do something, he does it. So he made two particular commitments, if you will. One was to help all of us to open up the process. At times ideas get jammed up and the committee process really isn't allowed to work as it was designed.

The other is to look at redistributing power within the conference so that more rank-and-file members have a chance at membership of some of the bigger committees. I think a commitment on those two fronts, to work in that direction was awfully, awfully important.

COSTELLO: So work in that direction. Does that mean no concrete deal has been done?

SANFORD: It means no concrete deal has been done but it means what I said just a moment ago, which is he has a lot of credibility within the conference because he does what he says he's going to do and he's done it over time.

COSTELLO: Did he win you over? Do you support him?

SANFORD: I do. I've known him for a long time. And I've always been impressed with both his bearing, his demeanor and his actions. Most of all I've been impressed with what he did when he was chairman of the Budget Committee in pushing to do something about this financial cliff that we're headed toward as a nation.

[10:15:08] COSTELLO: Let's talk about the budget battles because you know there are several budget battles in the coming weeks, including a decision on whether or not to raise the debt ceiling.

Will the Freedom Caucus be for raising the debt ceiling? Will that happen by the deadline?

SANFORD: I couldn't presume to talk about the Freedom Caucus as a whole. You know, it's an interesting group in that we have an 80 percent threshold by which we make a -- you know, a formal group action. And whether or not we'll get to an 80 percent action or not on some action as it relates to the debt ceiling, I can't read those tea leaves just yet. We'll see.

COSTELLO: Well, it's coming up soon. It's just in a couple of weeks. How about you, are you for raising the debt ceiling?

SANFORD: What I want to see is what we're looking at exactly. My natural biased would be against doing so. I think we are, indeed, headed toward a financial cliff as a nation. And if we don't turn spending around here in this country, we got real problems coming ahead. They're not that far out. And we're talking roughly 10 years out that we need to cross over -- when we only have enough money at the federal level to pay for interest and entitlements and essentially nothing else.

So I think we need to look at tapping the brakes in any way possible as we get closer and closer to that date. Debt ceiling is such a tool. What can we attach to it, what can't we attack to it? We'll see as we get closer.

COSTELLO: Did Paul Ryan talk about that, the debt ceiling, and whether to raise it or not when he met with the Freedom Caucus?

SANFORD: He didn't. You know, our conversations were much more general in nature about his style of leadership. One thing, for instance, I think he's committed to is this idea of going out and selling the ideas that conservatives believe in. I think that one of the great frustrations, rightly or wrongly with Speaker Boehner, was that the rank-and-file membership, the grassroots folks out there, didn't feel like people were taking the argument, articulating the arguments that they believed in on the Sunday morning talk shows and others. I think that you will see a Paul Ryan speakership do that, but I don't want to speak for Paul Ryan.

COSTELLO: Well, I think what most Americans want to see is a functioning Congress. Will we see that?

SANFORD: Yes. I mean, I think that if you -- again, look at again what has already happened. You've got very disparate parts of the Republican conference uniting behind a -- a Paul speakership. I mean, this goes from the Tuesday group, which is more moderate in focus, to a group like the Freedom Caucus, which is, you know, quite conservative in focus. You look at the different folks who were contemplating a run for the

speakership and the way in which all of them, Jason Chafee, let's go down the line, said, I'll tell you what, if Paul is going to run, I'm not. That says a lot about his ability to unite a conference and I hope that it spells well for things going forward.

COSTELLO: Me, too. Representative Mark Sanford, thanks so much for joining me.

SANFORD: My pleasure. Thank you.

COSTELLO: You're welcome.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, a harrowing rescue operation in Iraq leads to an American combat death. Up next we have new details about the soldier who lost his life.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:22:30] COSTELLO: Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail today after 11 hours of grueling testimony in front of that Benghazi hearing yesterday. She's speaking at the women's forum. And as you might expect, she got a wild round of applause. This happens moments ago.

Let's listen in.

CLINTON: Thank you, all. Thank you very much.

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: Whoa. Well. It's been quite a week, hasn't it? Well, thank you all so much. I am absolutely delighted to be here. As some of you may know, I had a pretty long day yesterday. But I finally got to answer questions, something I've been pushing for, literally, a year. And I am just grateful I recovered my voice, which I lost a little bit. But as I said at the start, I wanted to rise above partisanship and reach for statesmanship, and that is what I tried to do.

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: And now I am delighted to be here with all of you, to be with the WLF, a group that actually focuses on the issues. You are women after my own heart, and I want to thank Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Carol Pensky, Cynthia Friedman, Lonnie Shackelford, and all the terrific speakers you've heard from and will hear from, including my friend, Leader Nancy Pelosi.

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: And I wanted to say a word about another great Democrat, who has always been a champion for women and families and all of us. Vice President Joe Biden has been in the trenches with us for years.

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE) CLINTON: He fought for the Violence Against Women Act and so much more. And I'm confident that history isn't finished with Joe Biden. As he said the other day, there is more work to do, and if I know Joe, he'll be right there with us on the front lines.

[10:25:07] And I want to thank all of you for putting women's voices, women's ideas, women's lives right where they belong at the heart of American politics. You know, it is sometimes hard to believe, but the notion that women should be equal partners in the life of our nation is still pretty new. That's why the Women's Leadership Forum was created. To help make that ideal a reality.

During the 1992 campaign, Tipper Gore and I traveled all over the country together and we spent a lot of time in people's living rooms, in their backyards, sitting around kitchen tables, talking with mothers and daughters and grandmothers about their lives. And we heard so much. We heard about the dreams for the future that people had for themselves and their kids. And we heard a lot about the struggles that made life harder than it should be. The problems that kept women up at night.

Again and again, we would hear, you know, no one's ever asked us these things before. To a lot of them it seemed like Washington just wasn't very interested in the actual real lives of women in our country. So we decided we have to make sure that in this party, our party, women's voices would always be heard.

COSTELLO: All right. We're going to jump away. But as you can see, a very receptive crowd at the Women's Leadership Forum for Hillary Clinton after that long, long night last night.

More than one analyst says it's been a fantastic week really for Hillary Clinton. Take a look at the headlines. This is from ABC, the "Get Hillary Clinton committee did not get Hillary." Politico said Clinton survives. The "Chicago Tribune's" headline, "11 hour grilling reveals little new." "USA Today's" headline, no clear wins for GOP at Benghazi hearings. Even the conservative "Drudge Report" could not muster much fire. The best he came up with, "Hillary health warning -- coughing fit."

Honestly. We are looking at the big picture this morning so let's bring in Sabrina Schaeffer, executive director of the Independent Women's Forum, and Nomiki Konst, a Democratic strategist.

Welcome to both of you.

NOMIKI KONST, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Thank you.

SABRINA SCHAEFFER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, INDEPENDENT WOMEN'S FORUM: Hi.

COSTELLO: Thanks for being here. Sabrina, my favorite tweet of the night -- my favorite tweet of the night, rather, after watching this hearing for 11 hours was this tweet to Matt Taibbi. Quote, "Did they get to the bottom of who deflated those footballs?"

(LAUGHTER) SCHAEFFER: That's not good.

COSTELLO: Sabrina, did anything come of this?

SCHAEFFER: Well, I think that something came of it. I mean, there was a lot of political feeder and unfortunately I think this should have been a much easier run for Republicans than it was. They should -- there should have been less political theater. I think the facts should have spoken for themselves. If I were the Clinton campaign, I would be cautiously optimistic after yesterday. I mean she did a tremendous job holding her composure, but at the same time I thought she looked sort of bored and annoyed half the time which as, you know, someone in the middle is not ideal.

I think that, you know, in many ways as you were talking about earlier in the show, this does solidify that Republican base but they already don't support her. So it doesn't really matter -- what matters to the Clinton campaign are the people in the middle, especially those women who may be able to relate to the idea of their sons being abroad, working these military jobs and being worried for their security.

COSTELLO: Do you agree with Sabrina? Because --

KONST: Absolutely not.

COSTELLO: She -- I had to ask, Sabrina, because she was laughing during your answer.

SCHAEFFER: Laughing?

(LAUGHTER)

KONST: Well, I mean, listen, it was 11 hours. It was 11 hours of the same old questions. I mean, what the Republicans clearly were trying to do here was create an 11-hour ad to splice and dice during the campaign but they weren't getting anything because she was prepared. She knew what she was talking about.

This is Hillary at her finest and Republicans at their worst. They didn't come up with anything that was new. And it's true, I mean, politicfact.com came out and said if they would have gone into intelligence sharing and focus on intelligence sharing, then OK, that's maybe an area of concern, but other than that there was no wrongdoing at all. That's what Politifact said after this yesterday. And it's very true afterwards.

(CROSSTALK)

SCHAEFFER: I think we should be careful, I mean, I wasn't exactly defending Republicans nor was I saying that Hillary Clinton did a bad job. I'm just saying that there were some sort of damning moments here where it was clear that she didn't -- she did not speak truthfully to the American people. And in many ways it did reinforce --

KONST: But that's not what the hearing is about. SCHAEFFER: Yes -- no, but it is in many ways this is an election

season.

KONST: You know, comments in private versus comments in public, they may not be good --

SCHAEFFER: So I mean, no one think that this isn't in a vacuum.

KONST: OK. Comments in private versus comments in public may not be politically, you know, good, doesn't look good out there, but she didn't do anything wrong. There was no wrongdoing. You know, these were all prosecutors, these were all trial attorneys, playing trial tricks on the American people.

SCHAEFFER: My goodness.

KONST: They were playing trial tricks to make it look like there was all this wrongdoing for 11 hours. The only people --

(CROSSTALK)

SCHAEFFER: Well, I was more supportive of her until you started saying all this. I think I'm not sure you're doing her any favors by suggesting that she didn't do anything wrong.