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Hillary Clinton Testifies About Benghazi Attack To Congressional Committee; Hurricane Patricia Continues Trek Along Mexico's Pacific Coastline; Donald Trump Loses Lead In Iowa. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired October 23, 2015 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00] BUCK SEXTON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Her only critic inside the race dropped out. And then we had Benghazi more or less flaming out. Now, there are some things that came out of that that I think will perhaps continue to be brought up in the course of the campaign, but clearly after 11 hours, there was nothing that came out but those catastrophic for her. She did come across as poised. It didn't seem like it worked if the idea as some have alleged was to be a partisan witch hunt. They did not manage that. And so, yes, it has been a strong week for Hillary Clinton. But I will say it's a long race and people don't trust her and there are things that were not good for her.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: We will loop back on that because I do want to get on the substance.

Governor Grantholm, your thoughts?

JENNIFER GRANTHOLM (D), FORMER MICHIGAN GOVERNOR: Yes. Well, Thanks. I actually agree with most, not all, but most of what Buck just said, which is that you know, 10 hours or 11 hours of testimony, it's the longest amount that any witness, single witness, has testified in Congress over the past 20 years. Three hundred and sixteen questions, 114 interruptions by Republicans and she showed that she is presidential. She is unflappable. And truly, you know, you don't get many chance like this as a candidate to demonstrate how knowledgeable, how sustained your knowledge is under fire over a long period of time. She came out fabulously. Although I must say she still has a primary to run. It's not like this is over. She has a ways to go.

(CROSSTALK)

GRANTHOLM: And by the way, another piece of good news today is to ask me also endorsed her. So it's been a good week.

BALDWIN: All right. Let's get to the disagreeing between the two of you. Let's move on. After her testimony there yesterday, I know that the chair of the Benghazi committee Trey Gowdy, he was asked what he thought if he had anything new came out of that, you know, 11-hour long hearing. Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. TREY GOWDY (R), CHAIRMAN, HOUSE SELECT COMMITTEE ON BENGHAZI: I think some of Jordan's questioning -- when you say new today, I mean, we knew some of that already. We knew about the emails. So in terms of her testimony, I don't know that she testified that much differently today than she has previously times she's testify testified.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Nothing really new.

Buck Sexton, where was the damning piece of evidence from Republicans?

SEXTON: There was some that's new in the sense that it solidifies a narrative that existed before. People who believe that Hillary Clinton choose what was implausible and she knew to be not true at the time as a narrative of why the Benghazi attacks happened. Look at the e-mail she sent, for example, to Egypt or her daughter and say she knew this was a terrorist attack right away and -- versus it having anything to do with the video. And so, essentially, people can say, yes, those of us who have been telling that Hillary is a liar were correct. The problem is that it doesn't seem to matter all that much. It seems like she's still able to continue on.

(CROSSTALK)

SEXTON: Self-worthiness has an issue in the poll. Also, with Sydney Blumenthal. At one point she said these were unsolicited. They clearly were solicited. Do you could say that on the course of 11 hours you're going to get tripped up somewhat, but that seemed like an intentional misdirection at best in an obvious and a lie at worst, if you want to take on that direction.

And then also just her ineptitude and inability to be a secretary of state who is paying attention to one of the most critical places in the world literally at that time. Not just in tropical storms of it being a country we just to topple and there was that importance, but also for her and the Obama administration. Libya was their choice, their decision. And if you have the ambassador there sending hundreds of requests for more security unanswered, that's dereliction of duty.

BALDWIN: Governor Grantholm, you have to respond to that.

GRANTHOLM: Yes, of course. One, she said repeatedly yesterday and has said all along as the accountability review board, the bipartisan board that was set up to investigate this. And the other committees have found that it was not her responsibility to respond to security requests. They went to the security professionals. Now, the accountability review board's suggested that changes to that and she put them all in place. So she took responsibility. She took action and that is critical.

Second, with respect to her changing the narrative, both are true. There was an attack and, yes, some of it was fuelled by a video. It doesn't have to be one or the other.

SEXTON: We're beyond that, actually. We are beyond that. GRANTHOLM: We are not beyond that. Hello. No, no, no. There was an

attack in Cairo. You know very well that video helped to fuel perhaps some of the motivation of some of those who were attacking. But it wasn't the only thing.

SEXTON: They added it in. There's no way.

GRANTHOLM: No, no, no. As she repeatedly said both can be true that you don't know the motivation because who saw an inflammatory video. You also know that there was a planned attack. Both of them can be true. My God.

As Trey Gowdy said yesterday, wait, wait. As Trey Gowdy said yesterday, he didn't learn anything new. There was nothing new. The only question that's left is, when are they going to shut this down after having spent $4.7 million worth of taxpayer money? This committee, really the Republican National Committee should reimburse the United States for this.

[15:35:05] SEXTON: Now you're filibustering. There's a couple points that are important here. One is that the idea it's not her responsibility is false, in fact. She's a secretary of state. He's a U.S. ambassador.

GRANTHOLM: She claims responsibility.

SEXTON: Excuse me, Madam. I worked for the CIA. No, she did not take responsibility. That's meaningless. She should have offered her resignation right away. Donald Rumsfeld, in the aftermath of (INAUDIBLE), the head of the secretary - I'm sorry the head of the Pentagon, offered his resignation because the box stop with him. It should have stopped with Hillary but she didn't want to deal with it. No, this is just the truth.

BALDWIN: What about the CIA? Speaking of CIA, why wasn't Petraeus part of the grilling? Because it was CIA, you know, folks who were in and around Benghazi at the time. Why wasn't that part of it? To either of you.

GRANTHOLM: It wasn't part of it because that's not the purpose of that committee. The committee, as Kevin McCarthy said, was for the purpose of bringing Hillary Clinton down. Why don't they want to release the transcript of Sydney Blumenthal? Because out of the 550 questions that he was asked, only 20 of them were about Benghazi.

Seven other committees have reviewed this. They have found no wrong doing. They said that there was systemic changes that needed to be made and she took responsibilities. She was accountable and she took action. This committee is not about Benghazi. It's about taking Hillary Clinton down.

SEXTON: -- because that's going to benefit you politically. And by the way, when it came time for her to look as though she really had a close personal connection with ambassador Stevens, she was quick to assert that. And then we find out that she couldn't -- he couldn't email her, couldn't find her, and had never talked to her on the phone since she sent him to Libya. This was on her. She was a poor secretary of state. Hopefully that will factor in.

BALDWIN: But isn't it true that that's not protocol with all the different embassies. I understand. I talked to General Kenneth (ph) last night on that. He said he was surprised that they were not in contact.

Final thought, but moving forward, Iraq, Syria, hot spots around the world, what about our diplomats who we're sending to these places?

SEXTON: I think this one was for me. They take considerable risks and they are trying to do the best they can under very difficult circumstances. But it's essential for them to know that the first reaction and the rea reactions of all those around those in the power structure here at the state document, the Pentagon, the rest of the government is going to be to keep our peep safe. And worry about the politics as a very, very distant issue, not on how are we going to handle this for the new cycle tomorrow.

BALDWIN: Governor, you get the last word.

GRANTHOLM: I don't disagree with that at all. That's exactly right. And that is why this committee should be disbanded.

BALDWIN: Buck Sexton, Jennifer Grantholm, thank you both. Appreciate it.

GRANTHOLM: All right. Thank you.

BALDWIN: Twice one week, once again, Ben Carson coming out on top knocking Donald trump out of first place in a major poll. We'll discuss the role women are playing in Dr. Carson's sudden surge.

And straight ahead, the strongest hurricane ever recorded is about to make landfall likely as a category 5 storm. We'll talk to someone inside the evacuation zone, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:42:14] BALDWIN: All eyes on hurricane Patricia and is hunting its trek towards the Mexico's pacific coastline. It is category 5 storm. It's the strongest on record with monster winds of 200 miles per hour. It looks like Patricia will be more powerful than hurricanes Andrew and Katrina. And the intensity of it, it is frightening, incredibly frightening.

Earlier Thursday it was just a tropical storm. And then flash forward 24 hours, massive cat 5 hurricane. It's supposed to make landfall somewhere between (INAUDIBLE) in just hours possibly at catastrophic levels. This is what we are hearing. And obviously, with all these warnings, you have this massive preparations under way. People, they are being evacuated. Flights in and out of parts of (INAUDIBLE) are suspended.

But we have a crew now officially there. My colleague Martin Savidge is on the phone with me. And you have just driven, Martin, actually inside the bulls eye of the

storm. I want you to tell me about how you get there, how you got there and what you saw along the way. I'm hearing about a lot of traffic.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (on the phone): It was a lot of traffic, Brooke. Yes, hello to you. It's great to hear your voice.

And yesterday, of course, we were up there looking for El Chapo, who was on the run, the most wanted. And now here we are chasing this massive and extremely dangerous hurricane.

It was about seven hours it took us from Mazat (ph) Island. It was about 200 miles to the northwest of (INAUDIBLE). We left around 5:00 this morning and didn't arrive until about half an hour ago. We're still setting you have our cameras (INAUDIBLE).

Initially, the roads were deserted. But once you got closer to Puerto Vallarta, it was on the screen of traffic coming up. In other words, bumper to bumper. And number of things you notice. Number one, there were a lot of tour buses. Many of the tourist hotels here, and if you don't know (INAUDIBLE) they shut down. They evacuated. It was decided it was best just simply that people leave. And they had the opportunity to get away from this all. So that is what they have been doing. The airport is closed so they are not going to be flying out.

As for the local people here and who stayed behind, what they have done is open up schools in the hills farther away from the coast to house people there. They cannot stress how dangerous this potential storm is.

The other thing we saw was prepositioning of heavy earth moving equipment. This is a mountainous area. They (INAUDIBLE) to landslide. Debris, all about the block, first responders trying to get in any of the hard hit. We saw a lot of bulldozers. We saw a lot of earth movers, graters, those kind of things exactly needed that they are trying to keep the primary highways open. But even the smallest of roadways were jammed with everybody leaving town -- Brooke.

[15:45:01] BALDWIN: Chasing El Chapo to chasing the biggest hurricane ever.

Martin Savidge to you and your crew, please stay safe. We will look for your visuals in the coming hours. Thank you so much.

Turning now to the race for the White House. A news Donald Trump has fallen now to second place in this new poll in the key early voting state, a distant second place might I add. So how is he reacting to the news? Stay with me.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:49:54] BALDWIN: Donald Trump loses his lead in Iowa, Bernie Sanders goes for laughs on Kimmel and Rapper P Diddy (ph) says voting is a scam. Some politics now, first two important Iowa polls and we have the

numbers for you. Dr. Ben Carson leads the Republican field with 28 percent, Trump in a distant second. The billionaire real estate mogul turned up the radio with this reaction.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[15:50:17] UNIDENTIFIED MALE REPORTER: You're ahead in everything except this Iowa Quinnipiac poll. Why is that the outlier? What's going on in Iowa?

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, I was very surprised to see it. You know, I was in Iowa last night. We had 4,000 people. It was packed. It was great. It was a love fest. It was amazing. And I was actually surprised -- I'm not saying a thing like that can't happen, but I was very, very surprised to see it because I think we're doing well in Iowa. I have a feeling we're doing much better in Iowa than the polls are showing you want to know the truth.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: An avid tweeter, Donald Trump's follower in the polls prompted this re-tweet quote "Ben Carson is now leading in Iowa, too much #Monsanto in the corn creates issues in the brain?" Within hours Trump deleted that from his feed and tweeted this blaming an intern for that quote "the young intern who accidentally did a retweet apologizes."

All right. CNN senior political reporter Nia-Malika Henderson is with me.

I want to stay on the polls there, Nia. What's behind Dr. Carson's rise?

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: Well, people really like Dr. Carson in Iowa. He hasn't been there much over the last six weeks or so, but he had a ground game really in the summer. I think we're starting to see some of the fruits of that labor. He'll be there tomorrow as well. He's on book tour now.

He knows his audience almost more than anybody in this race. Trump does too, but he knows that the things that he sometimes say actually resonates with the people in his audience and the people who have liked him. I think we've got him commenting on how he's doing so far in this race speaking from Kansas.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BEN CARSON (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I'm gratified by the fact that so many people are really paying attention to what I'm saying. Because none of the things that I'm saying are wild crazy things. They are very logical things. And if people really sat down and thought about them rather than allowing themselves to be whipped into a frenzy.

(END VIDEO CLIP) HENDERSON: In this Iowa poll actually ask Iowa caucus voters, GOP folks, what they thought about some of the things he said about guns and Nazi Germany, about Obamacare liking it to slavery and they pretty much agree with him. They find what he was saying a refreshing. They think it's acceptable. So he does know his audience.

BALDWIN: All right. From Dr. Carson to Bernie Sanders, getting some laughs on Jimmy Kimmel. Here's a clip.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIMMY KIMMEL, COMEDIAN: You have excited a lot of young people. Have you ever excited young people before?

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Not too often.

KIMMEL: What did you think of Larry David's impersonation of you on "Saturday Night Live"?

SANDERS: Well, I thought it was pretty, pretty, pretty good.

KIMMEL: Bernie Sanders everybody.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: He's got a sense of humor.

HENDERSON: That's right, he does. And this is kind of full spectrum Bernie Sanders. He hasn't approached the campaigning that is sometimes dull or sometimes everything is awful approach to campaigning, but here we see him with that sense of humor. He is like this pop culture phenomena.

BALDWIN: Totally.

HENDERSON: In some ways it's good for him because it's introducing him to a whole new crowd. And some ways I think it isn't all good because in some ways he's become a bit of a caricature of himself. He sounds like Larry David in a way that you remember Tina Fey was so able to so quickly capture Sarah Palin and that wasn't always good for her.

BALDWIN: That's right. All right, Nia-Malika Henderson, thank you very much.

HENDERSON: Thank you.

BALDWIN: And make sure you catch, just a heads up for you, watch Jake Tapper this Sunday's "STATE OF THE UNION" 9:00 in the morning eastern time. He'll be joined by these three presidential candidates, Marco Rubio, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump all in one show. That is Sunday morning must-see TV 9:00 a.m. eastern.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:58:44] BALDWIN: All right. Before I let you go, I want to introduce you to another amazing top ten CNN hero from this year, Kim Carter turned her life around. She spent more than a decade cycling in and out of incarceration and homelessness, so she knows firsthand how hard it is for women in similar circumstances to get their lives back.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KIM CARTER, TOP 10 CNN HERO: What option does a woman with nothing have to start over? You have no money. You have no ID. You have no family. You have no friends. And you're just out there walking the streets lonely with nothing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: It is an incredible story as so many of our heroes are of course. And you can read all about them. We urge you to do so. Just go to CNNheroes.com. And while you are there make sure you read about all ten of our heroes for this year 2015. And then we want you to vote once a day every day for your favorite to be the CNN hero of the year. Again, that is CNNheroes.com.

And make sure again you tune into Jake Tapper on Sunday. Marco Rubio, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump all on "STATE OF THE UNION" that is Sunday morning.

I hope you all have wonderful weekends. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you so much for being with me. But stay right here. Jim Sciutto is sitting in for Jake Tapper.

"The LEAD" starts right now.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Thank you, Brooke Baldwin.

Shorelines bracing for catastrophe. "THE LEAD" starts right now.