More Backlash For Rice Over Libya
MALVEAUX: I want to go back to Capitol Hill with Dana Bash here. We are covering a breaking news story. And, obviously, Dana, you've been following all the ins and outs of this, but essentially the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice, going before members of Congress. Specifically Republican critics, who she's trying to win over, trying to explain what she knew, what she didn't know coming out of the Benghazi attacks. And it really sounds like she is not winning over anybody, if anything. And it is somewhat surprising coming from moderates like Senator Susan Collins.</s>DANA BASH, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. And what we just saw -- and I believe we had some of it live on air -- is the second meeting that she had today here on Capitol Hill, wrapping up with Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee. Now, unlike Susan Collins, he was very open about his questioning of Susan Rice before this meeting, saying that even something like she would be a better Democratic National Committee chair than Secretary of State, because he, like other Republicans, accuse her of being too political potentially for the job. Here's what he said about just the meeting in general about what he learned about Benghazi, starting to say that he doesn't believe now that there were any heroes in the administration with regard to how they dealt with the attack.</s>CORKER: The American people have a healthy distrust of government. We respect our country and love it, but we have a healthy distrust of government. And I would say that everything that I've seen around Benghazi should lead people to continue to have a healthy distrust of our government.</s>BASH: Now, on the key question right now, which is a political question about whether or not if Susan Rice were to be nominated by President Obama to be the next Secretary of State, if she could even get approved in the Senate. Senator Corker was very clear that he said he's not going to go there right now. He won't say yea or nay. But he also said that he had a message for the President, which is to take a step back, think about whether or not she would be the appropriate person to be nominated. That's effectively what he said. Which, if you read between the lines is, don't nominate her.</s>MALVEAUX: Dana, in talking to these members of Congress and seeing how all of this has unfolded, specifically when you look at Senator Susan Collins, a moderate from Maine, what do you make of the -- Susan Rice's chances of actually even being nominated at this point, much less getting through the process with all of these unanswered questions and still criticisms?</s>BASH: I'll tell you, Suzanne, I was asking Democratic leadership aides in the Senate a couple of weeks ago when Republicans first started -- her chief critics, Senators McCain, Graham, and Ayotte, started to say that they would block her nomination. I asked these Democratic sources whether or not they thought that they could overcome that. And the answer that I got was, yes, that they just did not think it was even remotely possible for Republicans to really -- especially in the words of this one source, you know, old white men to block the nomination of an African-American woman. They just didn't think that that was plausible. Now, a couple of weeks later, hearing from other Republicans and actually just doing the math, I'm not so sure that's true. I'm not so sure that it is true that Democrats would be able to get the votes. But, again, that's why Susan Collins' comment is so critical, because as we've talked about, she's one of the few remaining moderates. And unlike other Republicans who tend to get more political, she tries not to.</s>MALVEAUX: Right. Dana, I've got to let you go, because we're running out of time. Any chance that Susan Rice would come back again to talk to more Republicans or is this pretty much done, do we know?</s>BASH: We were told that she is going to be having several meeting. So this has only been four meetings all together.</s>MALVEAUX: OK.</s>BASH: I'm sure she would likely come back.</s>MALVEAUX: All right, Dana, thank you very much. Appreciate it. We're also following other stories. After shelling out billions of dollars in fines, the oil company now, BP, just got slapped with more tough news. It is now banned from doing any new business with the U.S. government. The announcement came with some pretty tough language as well.