The Political Points Behind the Jokes; Smoking Gun or Partisan Nonsense?; The Clintons vs the Media
KING: Welcome back. Republicans call it the long sought Benghazi smoking gun. The White House calls that partisan nonsense. Our puzzle today puts into context a newly discovered White House e-mail that has Washington in a frenzy. Let's take a closer look -- oops, she doesn't want to work here. All right. The e-mail comes from the Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, it was written back in 2012 right before the election. Ben Rhodes preparing Susan Rice for an appearance on the Sunday shows. Now Congress says this was covered by a subpoena. Remember here is the President of the United States -- listen here, this is the President just after the election in 2012 promising if Congress wants information about Benghazi they will get it.</s>OBAMA: We have provided every bit of information that we have and we will continue to provide information and we've got a full blown investigation.</s>KING: That's the President talking just after the election in 2012. We'll have a full blown investigation; we'll give them what they want. The e-mail that came out last week from Ben Rhodes was only released because of a lawsuit from a conservative group called Judicial Watch. It's about preparing Ambassador Rice for the Sunday shows. It does talk about Benghazi. But listen to Jay Carney at one of several contentious White House briefings on this point saying this e-mail was not covered by the subpoenas.</s>JAY CARNEY, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Because all of the documents, the thousands and thousands of pages of documents including e-mails around the creation of the Benghazi talking points, which were amply reported on were about Benghazi. This document as I said was explicitly not about Benghazi but about the general dynamic in the Arab or in the Muslim world at the time.</s>KING: That argument however from Jay Carney at the White House podium undercut by the Obama administration's own State Department, which when it sent that e-mail the Ben Rhodes e-mail up to congress said in a letter that it was responsive to the committee's subpoenas. So the question at the table is, we know the White House Ben Rhodes right before an election was trying to defend and protect the image of the president. No breaking news there. That's what political staff does. We know the White House, in my view anyway, flunked the transparency test and politics 101. If there are documents get them out as early as possible. But is this Manu, Congress now they say they want John Kerry to testify about why we didn't get this sooner, they're forming a new select committee. Is that just let's drive up Republican-based turnout or is this some policy, some factual smoking gun?</s>RAJU: It's a little bit of both. I mean remember for a while Republicans have been pushing for this select committee, the hawkish Republicans like Lindsey Graham, John McCain. In some ways the creation of this select committee is dissatisfaction with the way the current investigation is going led by Chairman Darrell Issa. The concern is that Republicans believe -- a lot of them believe that they have not really drawn much blood from the White House yet and if there is a select committee digging and digging and digging they will get to the bottom of how this happened. They'll get to the bottom of the White House and the administration's explanation of what happened immediately afterwards and they'll bring people forward like Hillary Clinton potentially, right in the middle of this election year and certainly can drive up that --</s>KING: But that's what to me makes the White House decision and I get it, they have contempt for Congress, period. A lot of Democrats will say this White House doesn't even like them. They don't like this oversight process. They think that they could make a case that Issa has overstepped on a number of occasions. But if you have a document that you know, it talks about this, you know what it's going to do -- why not put it out for everyone? Why give the Republicans this?</s>HABERMAN: (inaudible) you can't -- and to your point about transparency test, you can't selectively decide what in a subpoena you're going to respond to and what you're not going to respond to. That was a huge error. Manu is absolutely right that this is a little bit of both. It remains to be seen what else they'll draw from this. The relevance of Kerry's testimony is debatable but you know Hillary Clinton certainly would be relevant. This will all be falling at the time when Hillary Clinton is beginning to become public again which is very important. And it's also worth remembering her book is going to focus not in small degree on Benghazi and what happened and so how that matches up with what ends up coming out of this committee is going to be interesting, too.</s>MARTIN: It's definitely great campaign fodder for Republicans for their base but you have to understand the conservative psyche here a little bit, too. I think there is still to this day regret that Mitt Romney did not embrace this issue more in the fall of 2012. And you can call that a bit of revisionism. I think they're so convinced that this is something, that this was something then and there's regret that he did not use more of it as well.</s>HABERMAN: That's absolutely true.</s>MARTIN: It's why in May of 2014 it's still here. I think because there's still frustration that Obama got re-elected in part because he didn't use this.</s>TALEY: That does go to the point this is at least at this point a base issue. It's not like you see the American public clamoring for more information about Benghazi. When you look at the polls, people are concerned about the economy just as we were talking about before.</s>KING: And if substantive information came out about something they did wrong as opposed to this -- I think everybody knows they wish they could have acted faster. There's a big bureaucracy at the State Department and the communications back and forth between everybody in the Pentagon.</s>MARTIN: Right.</s>KING: You know, that situation --</s>RAJU: But this will be -- yes.</s>RAJU: Exactly. It's going to be a huge distraction.</s>HABERMAN: For no reason and it was avoidable.</s>RAJU: Right.</s>MARTIN: That's self-inflicted. The Republicans are fixated on this. Why wouldn't you put everything out? You're enabling them.</s>KING: Another investigation came up at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner last night. The host, who's always a comedian, was Joel McHale and he was making note here that Chris Christie, you know, is under investigation for Bridgegate, that Chris Christie hired a law, conducted an internal investigation. Here's Joel McHale parroting Chris Christie.</s>JOEL MCHALE, COMEDIAN: I just looked into it. It turns out I'm not responsible for it. Justice has been served.</s>KING: A lot of people thought there were maybe one or two too many Christie jokes last night but he laughed through it all.</s>HABERMAN: I think he laughed through some of it.</s>HABERMAN: I think he was laughing on the outside, I don't think he was laughing internally. That bit was funny. That bit that McHale did was very funny. The weight jokes felt excessive and I felt too much and there were too many of them. And it was on and on and on, and at a certain point, pick one or the other, but both seemed too much.</s>KING: There were a lot of Bill and Hillary Clinton references last night. The Clintons are in the news all the time. I want to play first --</s>MARTIN: You noticed that?</s>KING: I do notice that. Listen, they --</s>TALEY: What?</s>KING: First I want -- this is Bill Clinton at Georgetown University earlier this week, his context here is Obamacare. I'm sure they feel the same way in the Clinton family about Benghazi. The former president is saying that we in the political media are the problem because once we get fixated on something we won't let it go.</s>BILL CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There is a craving that borders on addictive to have a storyline and then once people settle on the storyline, there is a craving that borders on blindness to shoehorn every fact to every development, everything that happens into the storyline, even if that's not the story.</s>KING: An interesting take from the former president, who I covered for many, many, many years. And he is a master at working the media. He'll shut you out when he doesn't want to, loves you when he needs you. I want to get -- bring that up but in the context Maggie of a fascinating piece you wrote this week about Hillary Clinton and her relationship with the media. And these are the quotes that just jumped out and they just stick in your head. You have in your piece "Look, she hates you, period that's never going to change," from a Clinton campaign veteran. I assume they meant us not you. You're delightful.</s>MARTIN: Maggie, it could be Prush.</s>HABERMAN: I was going to say it might have been my co-author Glenn Prush. Her relationship, to your point about how Bill Clinton handles the media and that's something that actually -- that quote that he just gave in the Georgetown piece, he said this behind closed doors in a Media Matters donor conference last year too. We have them in the story. And he repeated that line at a moment when our story was about (inaudible). His relationship with the media is very different than hers. She has never had the type of interest in engaging with the media and working the media the way he does. She's much more like Obama than she is her husband in this way.</s>KING: That's a great comparison.</s>RAJU: It's interesting that in the piece they noted that if she doesn't run, they're already making an excuse why she wouldn't want to run is that she doesn't want too go through the media scrutiny and have to deal with us all the time.</s>TALEY: I do remember on the flight back from Mandela's funeral, George W. Bush came back, talked to the press, forced Obama's hand, he had to come back and talk to the press and finally Hillary Clinton came back and talked to us for like 30 seconds.</s>KING: We got to go. I'm sorry everybody. I want to thank you for getting up early on the day after prom. We'll have much more conversation next week. Up next, tomorrow's news today, our reporters get you out ahead of the big political stories to come including the next step in the Republican establishment's plan to get this, humiliate the Tea Party.