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Paul Ryan May Run for House Speakership; Interview with John McCain; Joe Biden Still Possibly Considering Presidential Bid. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired October 21, 2015 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: That's you.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: That's you.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you very much. I was waiting for your two. Good morning. Welcome to your NEW DAY. Ignore the others. It is Wednesday, October 21, 8:00 in the east. Paul Ryan says he is willing to serve as speaker of the House, but there is a big "but" here. He needs his party to come behind him. He wants the GOP leadership to look at the factions and say get them together on board with me, and then I'll take it. And I have some things to talk to you about with my family also.

CAMEROTA: No matter who becomes speaker, Americans are making it clear, get your act together. There is a new CNN ORC poll out just this morning that shows disapproval for Republican leadership from bad to worse. It is now at 74 percent. Can Paul Ryan pull things together to get it in the right direction? CNN's senior political reporter Manu Raju is live from Capitol Hill with more. How is it looking this morning, Manu?

MANU RAJU, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Alisyn. Now, Paul Ryan is a candidate for speaker, but it is not clear if he ultimately will become speaker largely because he's trying to figure out whether or not those three competing factions in the Republican conference call all get behind him. This morning in about an hour Republicans will meet to continue those discussions, and the focus will largely be around the House freedom caucus, a group of roughly 40 conservative who torpedoes John Boehner's speakership and also effectively ended the bid of Kevin McCarthy, the House majority leader. Now the question is will they do the same to Paul Ryan.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

REP. PAUL RYAN, (R) WISCONSIN: I have left this decision in their hands.

RAJU: The ultimatum is set this morning by Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan.

RYAN: This is not a job I've ever wanted.

RAJU: After days of hand wringing by House Republicans essentially backing him into a corner. RYAN: I think our country is in desperate need of leadership.

RAJU: The 45-year-old vice presidential nominee is stepping up, saying he's willing to replace House Speaker John Boehner. But not so fast. Ryan says if and only if the three largest coalitions in the GOP House back his candidacy and agree to the following conditions by Friday. Ryan demanding that first the Republican Party goes from, quote, "an opposition party to being a proposition party."

RYAN: We think the nation is on the wrong path. We have a duty to show the right one. Our next speaker has to be a visionary one.

RAJU: Second, Ryan appealing to the House freedom caucus, requests an update to House rules making it harder to ever throw a sitting speaker.

DANA LOESCH, "THE BLAZE": You have the freedom caucus and the grassroots, they are concerned about Paul Ryan's pass.

RAJU: Alabama Republican Moe Brooks, a member of the House freedom caucus, says, quote, "There is growing concern in my district because of his amnesty and open borders immigration position.

REP. JOHN BOEHNER, (R) HOUSE SPEAKER: I think Paul would be a great speaker. I think he's got the skills to do the job.

RAJU: Still, time is running out as Boehner makes it clear he wants out soon.

BOEHNER: I expect to be out there have by the end of this month.

RAJU: Well aware of the 100 hour work week Boehner says he frequently clocks in as speaker, Ryan's last condition concerns his wife and three children.

RYAN: I cannot and I will not give up my family time.

RAJU: A family he does not want to let down.

RYAN: My greatest worry is the consequence of not stepping up, of someday having my own kids ask me, when the stakes were so high, why didn't you all you could do?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

RAJU: Now, Ryan does have support with other two factions in the Republican conference. That's a moderate Tuesday group and also another conservative caucus, the Republican study committee. But the House freedom caucus right now is backing another candidate for speaker. That is Daniel Webster of Florida, who told me yesterday that he would still run for speaker no matter what Paul Ryan did.

But if Ryan does not get into the race this could go on for weeks and weeks. And there are big fiscal issues looming, namely over raising the debt ceiling by early November, guys.

PEREIRA: All right, Manu, thanks for that reporting. We appreciate it.

Hillary Clinton is expected to face an eight hour grilling tomorrow before the House Benghazi committee. We're getting some new details about how she is preparing for her testimony and how her supporters are getting ready to attack the GOP led pane. We take you live now to Washington and CNN's senior political correspondent Brianna Keilar. Hi, Brianna.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: Hi, there, good morning, Michaela. There really is this sort of multi-front attack against Republicans on the House Benghazi committee the Democrats who support Hillary Clinton are launching. Really the latest volley in all of this is this. The is a 140 page book called "The Complete Guide to the Benghazi Select Committee" put out by David Brock who is a chief defender of Hillary Clinton, and his super PAC, Correct the Record, which is actually working in conjunction with the campaign.

So this is a group that we've learned is going to have a war room staffed with 30 people as Clinton testifies tomorrow, which we expect is going to take several hours as it did back in 2013 when she testified. We do understand that Republican groups who are against Hillary Clinton run will be doing something kind of similar. But Hillary Clinton, she's been laying low for a few days. She's been preparing for her testimony before the committee.

[08:05:03] Her campaign certainly, I think they feel like they are in a good place going into this. But they are also concerned that if she does have some stumbles that this could stymie some momentum she's had after her debate performance. The campaign has actually put out talking point, arming surrogates with some information, trying to get them all on the same page, urging them to call this a partisan charade, also telling them to say that Hillary Clinton is testifying to honor the memory of the four brave Americans who died at Benghazi. That is a quote. So this is how they are getting people ready to defend Hillary Clinton tomorrow.

CUOMO: Big questions on the political table, Brianna. Thank you very much.

Let's bring in a man with answers and perspective and a fetching tie, Republican Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. You are looking fired up, senator. Let's tick through the different issues before us on this Tuesday. First, do we know with any certainty whether or not the party will get behind Paul Ryan?

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN, (R) ARIZONA: I don't know, Chris. I'm not familiar enough with what's going on in the House. Obviously all of us hope that -- I hope that they would get behind Paul Ryan. I think he's a great guy. He's a great image for the party nationally. And we'd like to see things get on track over there. But I don't know enough about what's going on, to tell you the truth.

CUOMO: Senator McCain has positive words for Paul Ryan, has to help. Can you say similar things about Donald Trump? Having heard him a now talk about Afghanistan and ore situations abroad, do you believe he is the right representative for your party, sir?

MCCAIN: Well, as you know Senator Lindsey Graham is my candidate and will always be because we're very close friends. I do not understand some of Mr. Trump's statements. For example, the way to settle the problem with Iraq and Syria is, quote, "take aware their oil." I'm not sure how that works. I think he owes the Republican voters an explanation of how he would address this continuing crisis in the Middle East which continues to spiral downward due to a lack of -- total lack of leadership and strategy by the president of the United States, an abject failure of the philosophy of leading from behind.

CUOMO: Has he said anything that impresses you? And if he were to become the nominee, would you support him?

MCCAIN: I will support the nominee of the party. I think that obviously his commitment to leadership, his commitment to doing -- you know, to, quote, "make America great again," I'm not exactly sure again how you do that. But I know how to do it. But look, he has attracted the attention and at least the support of around a quarter of Republican voters so far. I respect that. Again, I'm still always behind my friend Lindsey Graham who I think understands these challenges better than anybody. But I'll let the voters determine it.

CUOMO: The Benghazi testimony tomorrow for Hillary Clinton, do you believe it opens a new chapter of curiosity, or does it close the book on the situation?

MCCAIN: I -- I'm not sure. But I do know that I was in Tripoli with Chris Stevens. He told me at that time of his concerns about security. It's very obvious that Susan Rice absolutely told -- gave false information to the American people saying that it was a spontaneous demonstration. Secretary Clinton told the families when the bodies came back that she would get the people who made the, quote, "hateful video." There are a lot of questions that are still unanswered.

CUOMO: So you believe that? You believe that there are things to account for that have not been to this point that are material to making America safer?

MCCAIN: As with any event that takes place, whether it be 9/11 or whatever it is, where American lives are lost, we have to have a thorough and complete investigation. And if people misled the American people, as I believe they were, particularly about the nature of the attack -- people don't bring rocket propelled grenades and the mortars to spontaneous demonstrations -- then I think the American people deserve to know the answers, Chris.

CUOMO: You don't think there's been enough time and money spent so far?

MCCAIN: I don't think the answers have been provided. I understand that just last night a whole bunch more e-mails were released by the State Department. I do not think we have all the information. I hope that this investigation will be completed. But I certainly don't have all the answers because there are many things that happened that have not been accounted for that brought about the tragic deaths of four brave Americans.

[08:10:03] CUOMO: And so it continues. We'll all be watching tomorrow.

Another interesting issue in terms of our national security, the president threatening a veto over the National Defense Authorization Act. What do you make of this situation?

MCCAIN: First of all what I make of it is the president is more worried about budgetary process and whether sequestration or these other arcane questions need to be answered, or does he care about the welfare, the benefit, the ability of the men and women who are serving in the military to defend the country and to receive the benefits and training that they need. If he vetoes this bill, he will veto all of those things.

This is an authorization bill. The fight with Congress is about money. There are appropriations bills. This is an authorization bill. And the president of the United States, if he does this, he will place his priorities about the budgetary process which most Americans don't care much about over the lives and benefit and welfare of the men who are serving in uniform in the military, and I think that's disgraceful.

CUOMO: Senator, the White House says the sticking point is not the process but Guantanamo and that the NDAA as currently drafted would prevent the closure of the base. Why can't you compromise on that issue?

MCCAIN: I'd be glad to compromise that issue. They promised me that they would get a plan as to how to do that. The president did, his secretary of defense and Lisa Monaco came to my office and said they would give me a plan, and they haven't done it. And they haven't done it for six years.

And by the way, the provisions in the bill are the same they have been for four years in the same defense -- in the defense authorization bill, the same provision that he signed the bill before. That is a straw man.

What they are trying to do Chris is hold hostage the Defense Authorization bill to force the Congress to raise nondefense spending. That is what this is all about. The only problem with that, they are holding the lives and welfare and benefit of the men and women who are serving in the military as hostages in this process. And that --

CUOMO: Understood, but obviously I'm just asking the question to see if there is a compromise that can be made. I will go back to the White House with what you say is a straw man. You can bet on that.

MCCAIN: But Chris, let me point out again, six and a half years ago, I said I want to close Guantanamo. You got to give us a plan --

CUOMO: And they haven't you are saying. MCCAIN: They have never given us a plan. The secretary of

defense and as chief staff person Lisa Monaco sat on a couch in my office and said we'll get you a plan immediately. Obviously they did tell me the truth.

CUOMO: Senator, we'll go back to them, I promise you that. I'll call your office with what their answer is and then we'll go on with the reporting from there.

Let me ask you something. Do you think it is deceptive for members of the GOP to say, hey, this debt ceiling, we can't just blindly go into it and authorize it because it is giving the government just a blank checkbook to spend whatever they want. Isn't that misleading because the debt ceiling is about paying for what you already agreed to spend? Shouldn't they really get of the initial spending and not just the mechanism to pay for what they agreed to spend?

MCCAIN: I agree with that assessment. The debt ceiling lifting is a result of failure to rein in spending. You said it exactly right.

CUOMO: All right, thank you for that, senator.

MCCAIN: For a change, for a change sir.

CUOMO: You see? Now I was going to say it was great to see you. I wasn't going to say anything about your football team in the eyes of the New York Jets because it's an ugly comparison for you right now, but you couldn't let it go on the nice note.

MCCAIN: There you go.

CUOMO: Senator McCain, always a pleasure. Always a pleasure.

MCCAIN: Thank you.

CUOMO: And I will come back to you about what the White House response is.

MCCAIN: Thank you.

CUOMO: You see that? When you think it's all OK, Alisyn, he comes in right at the end.

CAMEROTA: It is just too tempting Chris.

PEREIRA: You make it too tempting.

CAMEROTA: All right, while the country awaits a decision whether Joe biden will run, the vice president appears to be taking aim at Hillary Clinton and he's touting his credentials in taking subtle jabs at her. CNN's Jim Acosta is live at the White House for us. What he's he saying, Jim?

JIM ACOSTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It is not appears. It is happening, Alisyn. Vice President Joe Biden is sharpening up his not so veiled criticism of Hillary Clinton, sounding more like a candidate every day. Last night, take this, for example, he was at the tribute for former vice president Walter Mondale, and for the third time in two days he returned to what was a criticism of Clinton's comment last week at the CNN debate that she considers Republicans among her biggest enemies. Without really directly attacking Clinton, Biden said talk like that is naive and will not fix Washington. Here is what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, (D) VICE PRESIDENT: The other team is not the enemy. If you treat it as the enemy, there is no way we can ever, ever, ever resolve the problems. We have to --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[08:15:03] ACOSTA: Now, Biden also tried to clear up his role in the mission to kill Usama bin Laden, saying yesterday that he supported the president's decision to go after the Al Qaeda leader even though in the past he has said he had advised against that operation.

Now, the vice president also appears to be beefing up the potential ground game. He's lined up his support of the International Firefighters Union. And that group's president, Harold Schaitberger, told me he has spoken to Biden in the last few days, and that vice president in his words is thoughtfully weighing a bid for the White House. Schaitberger said his group is mobilizing to support Biden.

And we put this up on our screen, he told us over the phone, "Our union is preparing as if the vice president is going to announce his candidacy." Of course there are lots of "if" and "seems" and, well, we don't know yet. And that's essentially where things right now with the vice president. But what's interesting these last couple of days, he has been offering up a rationale for his candidacy, something critics have been lacking. And that is something that the vice president is seeming to say that he would represent that third term for President Obama which is something Hillary Clinton would also like to say on the campaign trail even though she's been criticizing the president on a number of policies lately.

Back to you, guys.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Jim Acosta, thank you for the reporting.

ACOSTA: You bet.

CUOMO: So, we want to tell you about the deadly gun violence erupting around the nation once again. Two police officers and a four-year-old girl among the victims.

CNN's Alexandra Field joins us now with this really terrible catalogue of incidents.

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It is a terrible catalogue, Chris, and this morning, the New York City Police Department is mourning one of their own.

This was the scene overnight in East Harlem, where Officer Randolph Holder was responding to reports of an armed robbery. The 33-year-old officer and approached a group of men and the chase quickly followed. Just seconds later bullets rang out. Holder was shot in the head. He was rushed to Harlem hospital but doctors could not save him.

Another gunshot victim, believed to be the suspect was found close by. He's expected to be charged later today.

Holder was a native of Guyana and a five-year veteran of the force.

Bill Bratton, police commissioner of New York, spoke about the loss just last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COMMISSIONER BILL BRATTON, NYPD: Four police officers murdered in about 11 months. That is about as bad as it gets. We've lost six in the line of duty but four, four murdered in the line of duty.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FIELD: Meantime in Kentucky, a standoff unfolding overnight, with a man now charged with the attempted murder of another police officer. Prestonsburg Officer Adam Dixon was hit in the chest late last night during the exchange of fire. He was airlifted to a local hospital for surgery and he is in stable condition. The suspect Robert Powers holed up inside a home before he was arrested and taken to the hospital where he is also being treated for gunshot wounds.

And another manhunt underway in New Mexico after a four-year-old gunned down in a road rage incident. Albuquerque police say one car pulled up next to another on Interstate 40 and opened fire. The little girl was hit and died at an area hospital. Authorities are asking anyone with information to come forward. It is not clear what led to the shooting in any sense.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Terrible situations across the board. Thanks so much for bringing that to us.

We have some breaking news into CNN. A U.S. military fighter jet has crashed into the farmland in the United Kingdom. Local police say the pilot was killed and was believed to be the only person aboard. It was near a Royal Air Force Base in Suffolk. The U.S. military is investigating what exactly went wrong and we will bring the details as soon as they become available.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Take a look at this life or death leap. This was 400 miles south of Alaska's Cold Bay. This is an unidentified French mariner, and he's about to make a leap off of his sailboat this Tuesday.

CUOMO: There he goes.

CAMEROTA: Yes, and he goes head first into a rescue ship, we're happy to report. What you cannot see is that he had tucked his cat inside his coat first. And you can see him then standing up again as the crew member rushes over to help him.

All of this was caught on a coast guard plane's camera. The sailor telling the crew he lost his rudder and rigging in rough waters.

PEREIRA: I mean, you watched -- I watched this video close up. And just seeing how much the seas were rising and falling and rising and falling.

CAMEROTA: You have to figure exactly when the right moment is to pounce.

PEREIRA: It's a risk. It's a chance you're taking. My goodness. Thanks goodness it paid off.

CUOMO: I like it that you discuss it in terms of preparing to do it yourself. And pounce is a good cat reference. Very good. Very strong.

All right. As we told you, Hillary Clinton is getting ready for her big day before the House Benghazi Select Committee. Will Democrats on the panel really resign their seats once Clinton wraps up? Doesn't that expose them to more trouble? We'll ask one of them, ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:23:42] CAMEROTA: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton squares off with the House Benghazi Committee tomorrow. The Democrats on the panel are so disgruntled with the direction of the investigation they say they may resign from the committee.

Joining us now is the Democratic member of that Benghazi Committee, Congressman Adam Schiff.

Congressman, thanks so much for being with us this morning.

Are you really considering resigning from the committee?

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D), CALIFORNIA: Well, I think we're going to have to consider what the Republicans intend to do with the committee going forward. As you may know, they plan to call 12 witnesses this year, including the defense secretary, the head of the CIA, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

They canceled all the others. The only hearing they had interest in was a hearing with Secretary Clinton. And we know from Representative McCarthy and Representative Hanna just why that's the case. So where are they going to go from here? And we're I think once we figure out, once they figure out what they want to do with this committee, are going to have to ask a hard question, are we justified in continually to lend credibility to a committee that largely has none?

And here is the dilemma. Without us on the committee, without us in the room for example, it is very hard for us to point out the misleading attacks, the misleading character of the attacks they have a been making. And I'll give you the most recent example.

Chairman Gowdy just as recently as last week released a 13-page letter largely attacking Secretary Clinton, accusing of her leaking -- actually not leaking but having an e-mail containing a the classified CIA source, putting American lives at risk the chairman said so breathlessly in that letter.

[08:25:16] And then what do we learn when we inquire of the CIA? Nothing in that e-mail was classified and nor was the name of this person. It was merely being protected out of their privacy interests.

CAMEROTA: Yes. But, Congressman --

SCHIFF: Yes?

CAMEROTA: But, Congressman, Republicans have a different story about all of. This they say there is still so much to be learned. Just last night, Speaker John Boehner said that they have basically been stonewalled by Hillary Clinton, by the State Department. He said that just yesterday for the first time did they receive Ambassador Chris Stephen's e-mails.

Listen to what John Boehner said last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JOHN BOEHNER (R-OH), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: Today, the State Department turned over 1,300 pages of printed documents from Ambassador Stephens e-mails.

BRET BAIER, FOX NEWS: Today.

BOEHNER: Today. Today.

They have been stonewalling us now for three years on giving us the documents that we need in order to get the truth out there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Congressman, what's your response to that?

SCHIFF: Well, like many of the comments in this investigation, I think very misleading. What the speaker did not tell you, what he did not say in those remarks is that we have already received a large number of Ambassador Stephens' e-mails. Indeed, the committee received them years ago, or at least a year or two ago. And we received those e-mails from the Committee on Government Reform.

So much of the content that our chairman was describing from those e-mails over the weekend were e-mails we already had.

CAMEROTA: But how can you know that? If you are just now reading 1,300 of Ambassador Stephens's e-mails, how can you know what you don't know? You don't know what content is in them if you are just reading them.

SCHIFF: Well, this is precisely the point. You don't go out as the speaker did and the chairman did if you're running a legitimate investigation and say we have discovered new e-mails that shed new light when the fact of the matter is when you go through them and chair them to the ones you already had, you may find the newly released e-mails don't tell any different story than the ones you already had. In fact, many of them may be precise duplicates of the emails you've already have.

That's been the pattern here. There's a claim made by the speaker, by the chairman. And a few days later when the dust settles, after they have gotten a headline in the newspaper, it's revealed actually, these e-mails referring to those they already had.

So, we're going to wait a few more days and figure out, is this really something new to these emails tell us anything we don't already know? Are these e-mails we largely already had? Because frankly, if you look at the claim they made the last week about the CIA source, not proved not to be true either.

CAMEROTA: Yes. Congressman, isn't the bottom line here, have you learned all there is to know about Benghazi?

SCHIFF: You know, look, we will never learn everything there is to know about any particular incident in our history. But I can tell you this, after 17 months. After $4.5 million, we haven't learned anything new that contradicts the core conclusions of the eight other investigations that went on before.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

SCHIFF: Yes, you can always find new facts in the things you knew already. But in terms of whether anything alters your understanding of the events, we have discovered new nothing to contribute. Nothing new to tell the families and nothing new to tell the American people.

CAMEROTA: OK. So if the conclusions have already been reached, who was to blame for what happened in Benghazi?

SCHIFF: Well, you know, in the first instance the terrorists who attacked us were to blame.

CAMEROTA: But beyond that? I mean, what else could the U.S. have done to prevent that?

SCHIFF: Beyond that, as we knew a year and a half ago, when the Accountability Review Board finished its work product, the State Department made serious mistakes in terms of security in Benghazi. And there were people they identified in their review that were responsible for those lapses in security.

So, those conclusions have already been made. And, frankly, nothing we've seen in the last 18 months tells us the responsibility lies anywhere else. But nonetheless, this investigation churns on, and why? As Representative McCarthy told us, because the goal is not really to learn something new about Benghazi at this point. The goal has been really only to see if they can damage the candidate for president.

CAMEROTA: But with all the information that you have, should Secretary Clinton have done something different to protect Ambassador Stevens?

SCHIFF: You know, what the Accountability Review Board found and I think is still the case of our investigation is there were people high up in the state department who is responsibility it was to respond to the ambassador's request for additional security. They didn't.

CAMEROTA: Including Hillary Clinton.

SCHIFF: That was a serious mistake.

Those requests didn't rise to the secretary's attention. And frankly, I think there is a serious policy question about whether you want the secretary of state involved in the micro management of security at each and every diplomatic facility around the world. It's a big job of secretary of state that involves more the security of particular facilities. But the Accountability Review Board did make recommendations about how to make sure that those requests reach the highest levels.