they could not comment on pending legal matters, but they will be able to settle, which they eventually will, because they will not dare take this case in front of a jury. chris hays is up next. tonight on "all in." the benghazi hearing filled with sound and fury, but did which learn anything? >> republicans are squandering millions of taxpayer dollars on this abusive effort to derail secretary clinton's presidential campaign. >> republicans go at hillary clinton in a marathon session. >> we came, we saw, he died. is that the clinton doctrine? >> i'm sorry that it doesn't fit your narrative, congressman. >> tonight, are we witnessing yet another example of clinton inspired overreach? will today's hearing have any bearing on hillary clinton's presidential hopes? and why are republicans so

obsessed with sidney blumenthal? >> if you think you've heard about sidney blumenthal so far, wait till the next round. >> all that, plus why the trump campaign is apologizing to republican voters in iowa. when "all in" starts right now. good evening from new york. i'm chris hayes. today in the longest running special committee in the history of the nation, former secretary of state hillary clinton took the stage as the witness of the house select committee on benghazi and as the object, many would say, of the gop obsession with tarnishing clinton as much as possible. no matter how hard republicans tried, image and optics, not substance, were very much the centerpiece of the proceedings that went into the night. the chairman, congressman trey gowdy, spoke to reporters after the 9:00 p.m. adjournment. >> she stayed to the end and i didn't hear a single word of complaint. i heard a little bit from some of the other folks but not from her. she's an important witness.

you can't investigate benghazi without talking to the former secretary of state. but as i said this morning, she's one important witness out of what is more than 50 important witnesses and there are a couple dozen left to go. in terms of conclusions, i don't draw conclusions until the end and there are more witnesses to talk to. so we keep going on until we're able to interview all the witnesses we deemed have access to relevant information. i don't know that she testified that much differently than the previous times she's testified. >> the lines of questioning ranged to the most high stakes to the most mundane without ever exposing anything that could be accused of wrongdoing. one congressman again even questioned whether clinton showed enough concern for the families. >> how would it have harmed the case that was -- that they were trying to build for you, secretary of state, just to check in on their well-being? >> i did check in on their well-being.

>> personally. >> i did personally talk to the people that were taking care of them, transporting them. >> the survivors, when did you talk to the survivors? >> i talked to the survivors when they came back to the united states, and one who was for many months in walter reed on the telephone. >> clinton's demeanor was composed, tolerant, patience, with just a little hint of disgust. a particular republican fascination with sidney blumenthal came to a head when trey gowdy and elijah cummings argued at length. here is a part of that exchange. >> we just heard e-mail after e-mail after e-mail about libya and benghazi that plumb sidney blumenthal sent to the secretary of state. the fact that he sent it by e-mail is irrelevant. what is relevant is he was sending information to the secretary of state. >> i move we put into the record

the entire transcript of sidney blumenthal. if we're going to release the e-mails, let's do the transcript. that way the world can do it. they have informed us that we have a right to a recorded vote on that motion. >> i'll tell you what, let's do that. >> if you want the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, let's see the -- let's let the world see it. >> why is it that you only want mr. blumenthal's transcript released? >> i would like to have all of them released. >> if you think you've heard about sidney blumenthal so far, wait till the next round. >> more on blumenthal later in the show. as for one point the republicans trying to make that blumenthal had better access to clinton than the deceased ambassador stephens. this tweet from the former american ambassador -- as ambassador of russia, i enjoyed multiple ways of communicating with secretary clinton. e-mail was not one of them. >> the ambassador said he always had constant communication with you but never had your e-mail

address. i would hope that ambassadors would have more direct and immediate lines of communication, and ambassador stephens certainly did, correct? >> yes. >> the information that we found out, as you pointed out, was not always flattering. there was no question that mistakes were made and we hopefully learned from them. but that was investigated. so what is the purpose of this committee? >> we'll speak with that former u.s. ambassador to russia in the next segment. the democrats dismantling of the gop line of questioning did not stop the republicans from taking the subject of ambassador stephens' access to absurd extremes. >> did he have your fax number? >> he had the fax number of the state department. >> did he have your home address? >> no, i don't think any ambassador has ever asked me for that. >> did he ever stop by your house? >> no, he did not, congressman. >> keep in mind, the congressman was referring to the ambassador to libya, who lived in libya, where hillary clinton did not live.

towards the end of the 11-hour hearing, congressman cummings launched into a critique of the committee's work. here is part of that. >> i think you have said this has not been done perfectly. you wished you could do it another way. and then the statement you made a few minutes ago when you said, you know, i have given more thought to this than all of you combined. so i don't know what we want from you. do we want to badger you over and over again until we do get the gotcha moment that he's talking about? we're better than that. we are so much better. we are a better country, and we're better than using taxpayer dollars to try to destroy a campaign. that's not what america is all about. and so you can comment if you like. i just had to get that off my chest. [ laughter ] [ applause ] >> after the applause and room

died down, secretary clinton responded with this. >> the answers have changed not at all since i appeared two years ago before the house and the senate. and i recognize that there are many currents at work in this committee, but i can only hope that the statesmanship overcomes the partisanship. at some point we have to do this, and i'm hoping that we can move forward together. we can start working together. we can start listening to each other. >> earlier this evening, i spoke with congressman adam smith who serves on the benghazi committee. a portion of his participation we showed earlier. i asked him his thoughts on the day's proceedings. >> it's frankly embarrassing the way the republicans have

conducted this hearing. at this point they're just asking the same questions over and over again. and literally in the entire time we've been here, they have revealed nothing new. they -- i guess the most damning thing they do is they point to the arb report and other reports that have already been done to point out the parts of those reports that were critical of the secretary. but that's no reason to have this committee. they are selectively pulling out bits of information from testimony, which we then have to read the full transcript that makes it obvious what they were saying is not the actual facts. it is clearly a partisan attack on secretary clinton. it's not a good day for the united states house of representatives. >> anything that particularly stuck out to you today as you were listening to the questioning, both from your colleagues on the democratic and republican side? >> the main thing that stuck out to me was representative roscoe who went after secretary clinton

on both of his lines of questioning for -- he was trying to basically say she was responsible for the libya policy, for basically the decision to join the coalition to remove gadhafi from power. the first time he did that, it's like okay, what does that have to do with benghazi? that is a direct political criticism of secretary clinton, and that's debatable. but that's got nothing to do with benghazi. the second time that representative roscoe did it was even more insulting. he went after her, trying to claim she was trying to take political credit for the policies, citing random e-mails and stuff. again, nothing whatsoever to do with benghazi. >> wouldn't the congressman say that of course it was the decision to enter into the coalition with nato to launch air strikes and ultimately depose gadhafi that brought about the situation that would lead to ultimately the attack on that embassy? >> yeah, but that's not the point.

i guess you could go back and say, you know, let's never get involved in foreign policy decisions and that's the way to prevent attacks, but that's not benghazi. that's not the attack. that's not what could we have done to protect the embassy. so i'm really struck, like i said, number one, by the fact that literally no new information has been brought to light by this committee and by the incredibly aggressive prosecutorial approach that they've taken to secretary clinton. even while claiming that's not their intent. if you watch the video, if you watch what's going on in there, you would be certain that their mission was to take down secretary clinton. >> congressman, obviously we've seen a tremendous amount of polarization in congress over the last 20 years, and it's very polarized right now. even with that, your report on the hill and on committees, committees have to work together with majority and minority staff. there is a certain amount of

interstaff just process work that has to be done. i am struck from the outside, and i would like your perspective on this, this seems as bad a relationship between the majority and the minority as i've ever seen on any committee that i've ever covered or watched. >> i think that is a very fair assessment. adam shift said it best, the only way this committee was ever going to have any relevance is if we reached a bipartisan conclusion. and the republican majority made no effort whatsoever from the beginning to try and attempt to do that. i would agree with you, this is as bad -- secretary clinton herself pointed out when the beirut bombings happened in 1983, a democratic congress investigated it with a republican president in a very professional manner. she even cited the embassy bombings in 1998 when that republican congress investigated a democratic president did it in a responsible way. so in the past, we've been able

to do this in a bipartisan way, and now, i mean, this committee has just, you know, totally destroyed that approach. >> congressman, thank you for your time on this busy day. >> thank you, chris. joining me now, senior writer for "newsweek" and author of "comprehensive guide to benghazi." curt, you've been following this quite a bit. the congressman mentioned the bombing in beirut in 1983. my understanding is that you actually got a survivor of that bombing today as they watched this hearing, is that right? >> after the hearing actually. it really summed up everything here, because the hearings today were easily the most embarrassing i have ever seen. and this is somebody who was serving overseas. this was somebody serving in one of the most dangerous places in the world at this point. at that point. this is somebody who was in the building when the car bomb blew up and destroyed the building. and what she wrote is, we were patriotic and respectful.

we never viewed what happened through a partisan lens. these oversight republicans have been contemptible. i think that speaks volumes. >> you know, i think they would say, you know, they keep saying we're trying to get to the bottom of this. this is important, four americans died. one of the things that struck me is after 11 hours, i still don't understand what the charge is, what the allegation is. what is the thing that they say is the cite of the wrongdoing? obviously, there was insufficient security, obviously things didn't pass properly through the channels to perhaps beef up channel or find a more reliable contractor. but i still don't get the wrongdoing that we're supposed to know about is. >> well, something you have to understand is that the republicans started politicizing the events in cairo and benghazi from the night it started.

i mean, you had romney running out in front of the cameras to condemn what the diplomats in cairo were doing while they were trying to save their lives. so this has been despicable from the get-go. in terms of what has come up since then, i have read all the reports. the house intelligence report was great, done by republicans. the senate intelligence report was great, done by republicans. the arb was great, done by an independent group that was appointed. basically, though, you have an obsession on the right wing. you have buttons going out with blood stains on hillary clinton's face. you have -- you know, the beast of benghazi. these are people who see this through a political lens and simply do not care about what actually happened, about keeping our diplomats safe or about the fact that they are telling

terrorists, hey, you have a small attack and maybe you can affect the presidential election. i'm sorry, the republican party is working hand and fist with the terrorists overseas by giving them far more power than they should have. >> that's a strong claim. if i were trey gowdy, i would say, look, you know, we have to investigate attacks. when the 9/11 attacks happened, obviously, there was a commission, et cetera. >> no question. no question that should happen. and that's why it's happened nine times. >> right, right. >> i think when you got to number five, it was enough. >> you could feel the string running out today. it was like we were watching it in real time as someone who isn't even -- and i read the arb report and not the other two reports in their entirety, i've read summaries of them. even as someone not as versed in

it as you are, it felt like it didn't take very long to get to a tremendous amount of repetition. >> well, there was a tremendous amount of repetition, all the questions had been answered before except the really silly ones. what was amazing to me was the number of times that a -- either a falsehood was trotted out or truly the members of congress didn't know what had been resolved before. you know, the issue of the cable, that was dealt with by the house intelligence committee. the issue of what was happening with the security e-mails. that was dealt with by the arb. you know, you sort of stand back and my favorite being, they start talking about sidney blumenthal's business interests, which i spoke to the guy who ran the company. they're saying he had nothing to do with it. so it's just lies or ignorance. >> curt, thank you very much for your time tonight. appreciate it. still ahead, much more coverage of today's hearing, including a breakdown of the republican strategy.

a look at the often referenced sidney blumenthal. who he is and why it's relevant. all that and more, ahead. [female announcer] if the most challenging part of your day

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♪ sleep train ♪ your ticket to a better night's sleep ♪ one of the most telling aspects of today's very long and very partisan benghazi hearings is what sure seemed like a preplanned effort to draw attention any time hillary clinton was handed a note from her staff, presumably in an attempt to make her look bad. >> i can pause while you're reading your notes from your staff. go ahead and read the note if you need to. [ laughter ] >> i have to -- i have to -- >> i'm not done with my question, i'm just giving you the courtesy of reading your notes. >> if you need to take time to read your note, i'll pause. >> you finish reading, and i'll start talking. >> if you need to read a note from your lawyer, you're welcome to, madame secretary. >> clinton seemed pretty unfazed by the whole thing. >> i can pause while you're reading your notes from your staff.

>> one thing at a time, congressman. >> so you can hear all that. she said she can "do more than one thing at a time, congressman. thanks. i'm good." it reminded us from another moment when clinton looked down and casually brushed some lint off her shoulder.

the ambassador to russia said that, you know, always had access and constant communication with you. never had your e-mail address. i would hope that ambassadors would have more direct and immediate lines of communication, and ambassador

stephens certainly did, correct? >> yes. >> gop obsession with whether ambassador chris stephens could reach secretary clinton by e-mail was batted down by my next guest. former u.s. ambassador to russia michael mcfaul. ambassador, you basically said today as this was going on, i had a lot of ways of interacting with the secretary, they weren't e-mail. what do you mean by that? >> well, i was just watching the -- i was on a plane actually and listening to the back and forth about e-mail. it just struck me that maybe people don't understand how communications work in the state department or in the u.s. government. the main way of communicating with the secretary is through a system of cables. now, that's an ancient word, but it's electronic and it works kind of like e-mail by the way. and you communicate to your assistant secretary or the undersecretary or when very urgent to the secretary of state. and if it's something that you want to do classified, it's all classified, but if you want to

do something sensitive directly to the secretary, you have a channel to do that, as well. then if addition, there's phone calls, there's the videoconferences. and in a case of emergency, and this happened to me a couple of times when i was ambassador, you can also reach out directly to some of her closest assistants. so one of those gentleman sitting behind her was jake sullivan. jake was the guy i always went to when i needed to get something urgent to the secretary. you can see from all these e-mails he was in constant communication with her. >> did the questioning from particularly the republican members show how the state department functions? >> no, quite frankly, no. there's all those things i just described. two, i want to remind the viewers that ambassadors are appointed by the president of the united states. so you also have a channel to the president and to the national security staff.

but third, remember, the state department and the u.s. government is a giant bureaucracy, and it wouldn't work if every ambassador was e-mailing the secretary every day. instead what you have is an interagency policy process. it starts with, i'm going to use a lot of acronyms here, the icp, the interagency policy committee. for me, that was russia. then the deputy's committee, the principal's committee. and you interact with your colleagues to formulate policy and deal with issues, including diplomatic security issues, which were an issue for me as ambassador out in moscow. that's a chain of command, if you will, that then goes up to the secretary, up to the president ultimately for them to make decisions. that's the way the system works. maybe it should be changed. but then we should have a debate about the system of communication in the u.s. government, because i'm sure it worked this way when i was in government for five years, and i know it probably worked the same

way when secretary rice was there. that's just the way it works. i'll bet you secretary rice didn't send one e-mail to one ambassador. >> it struck me that perhaps members of congress were mistaking their own operation where they have several dozen staff for running the state department with 70,000 employees and a massively complicated set of procedure and bureaucracy. how do you think the secretary did today? >> well, i only caught part of it. i was on a plane and i have a day job here at stanford, so i couldn't watch it all. the pieces i did, i respected her answers and i just wished we were talking about more of the substance and not just e-mail communications. but this is a process. >> ambassador michael mcfaul, thank you for your time. >> thank you. up next, my interview with a democratic congresswomen. on the benghazi committee who compared republicans to her son asking about ice cream for breakfast. that's after the break.

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who else was at your home, were you alone? >> i was alone, yes. >> the whole night? >> well, yes, the whole night. [ laughter ] >> i don't know why that's funny. i mean, did you have any in-person briefings. i don't find it funny at all. >> i'm sorry. a little note of levity at 7:15. >> earlier, i spoke with democratic representative linda sanchez.

i asked if anything she saw today surprised her. >> i'm a little surprised by the tone some of the republicans ok in questioning secretary clinton and the sort of wild goose chases they ran around on. again, nothing related to the events of september 11, 2012. no new information that sheds any light on what happened that evening. or that contra dikts -- contradicts what's in the eight previous reports on benghazi. >> some of the questions indicate a less than full understanding of the mechanics of the state department. are you confident that your colleagues are sufficiently briefed, sufficiently read up to kind of get their arms around this? >> you know, it was kind of bizarre this there today, because i think either they didn't read the eight previous reports or they don't have a fundamental understanding of how the different agencies work. or they do know and they just, you know, chose to ask

ridiculous questions any way. it was a little bizarre that even questioning secretary clinton when she gave very clear answers, they tried to change what her testimony was or assume as we say as lawyers, assume facts not in evidence. but they weren't really listening to the testimony. it just reminded me very much, i have a 6-year-old son, every morning i ask him what would you like for breakfast? he tells me ice cream. i tell him we don't eat ice cream for breakfast yet he'll ask me five or six times. that's kind of what they were going today. that's what they were doing, asking the questions over and over again. the facts don't change, so their narrative doesn't change. it's the same information that we've heard over the last 17 months over and over and over again. >> you, if i'm not mistaken, co-wrote an op-ed about the possibility of democrats, yourself, leaving the committee after today's testimony. given what you saw today, are you considering just throwing in

the towel on this enterprise? >> again, if we're going to spend ridiculous amounts of taxpayer money, to the tune of $5 million in now to uncover no new evidence, again, that changes anything in the conclusions of the eight prior reports, i don't really see the value in continuing to participate. again, there's this belief on the republican side that when they get new documents or they have these revelations that there's this new information out there, none of the new information sheds anymore light on what happened. it's all in the record that we have currently. >> congressman linda sanchez of the benghazi select committee from california, thank you very much. >> thank you for having me. >> more coverage of today's marathon epic hearing ahead.

let me tell you what i think the clinton doctrine is. i think it's where an opportunity is seized to turn progress in libya into a political win for hillary rodham

clinton, and at the precise moment when things look good, take a victory lap on all the sunday shows three times that year before gadhafi was killed and then turn your attention to other things. i yield back. >> one of the things that were clear is the republicans appear to be either unable or unwilling to perceive how they looked to the outside world, and was incapable of delivering a performance that resonates with the general public. members seem to live in a universe of articles and the rush limbaugh echo chamber where nasty attacks on clinton are the whole point. >> there's no evidence for a video inspired protest, then where did the false narrative start? it started with you, madame secretary. >> you're familiar with that clim -- claim, we came, we saw, he died. is that the clinton doctrine? >> it's just hard to comprehend

of why you would give us that blow by blow in something that we're not investigating here. >> yes, ma'am, leaders lead. >> why weren't you just plain with the american people? >> why is the white house upset that you're taking the credit. >> state department experts knew the truth. you knew the truth, but that's not what the american people got. >> the classic moment of gop clinton overreach which is the impeachment hearings of bill clinton. the republicans thought they had clinton dead to rights and somehow managed to turn the fact that the president had an affair in the oval office into a net political positive for the president. joining me now, democrat of new york who was in congress back in 19 98 for those impeachment hearings. congressman, do you feel any sense of deja vu watch thing today? >> oh, yes, i feel a great sense of deja vu. it's in many ways similar. it's a total fixation on either ridiculous or off-stated charges, anything to make a clinton look bad.

in that case bill, in this case hillary. travel gate and file gate and white water, all of which were nonsense. then you had the starr report at great public expense, that published huge volumes of pornographic material in the public record. after all these investigations, they found the president had an affair and tried to make an impeachment of what should have an private sexual affair and people ultimately said enough of this. >> the sense i got today was, there was no point at which the shovel in the ground was going to hit a bottom. the hearing going nine hours or however it ultimately goes. you know, this is a very -- there is no end to this. the process itself is the point. >> there's also no beginning. what you had here was an attack on an american embassy.

similar to the attack on the american embassy in other places at other times, similar to when 240 marines died in beirut in 1983. each of those had one maybe one investigation, one congressional hearing. here we've had eight so far, all to pin the blame, and pin the blame for what? it's unclear. either for not preparing properly or for the natural confusion of what happened for a few days afterwards and try to bring down hillary clinton politically. and when you really look into it, there's no there there. and there was no there there for the impeachment of a president based on a private sexual affair. >> the big question here, is there some turning point that happened today? is there a recognition of this being perhaps not -- this is not a fruitful line of inquiry, and i'm just talking factually about new pieces of information turned up today and it was hard to find

any, given there had been a set of quite thorough reviews of what happened that led to those four deaths. >> this is the eighth, i think, congressional investigation. two of them were joint democratic/republican investigations of the senate. five were republican-led investigations in the house. they all tried to find embarrassing information. none succeeded. and you're not likely to find any new information at this point that didn't come out then. and that's clear. so this is a great waste of time and public money, and nothing we didn't know has come out today so far. and i think people are going to be very turned off by this. >> this congress has had a kind of record for its lack of action in terms of the days it has worked, bills passed, et cetera. what do you think about the fact that side by side, you have this hearing and the amount of effort being put into this and some of the more normal courses of business don't appear to be getting done? >> well, i think there's an

inordinate amount of misuse -- this is a terrible misuse of the taxpayer's money for a political end that i don't think they'll succeed in obtaining, but namely to, as majority leader mccarthy said, bring down hillary's poll numbers, that's what this is all about, and taking up all this money and all this time and accomplishing probably nothing. and compare the fact that we haven't passed the budget, we haven't passed a transportation bill, all federal highway funding is going to come to a stop in a couple of weeks if we don't pass a bill. we haven't raised the debt ceiling with just a few days to go before the country defaults. and congress has been following a very relaxed schedule of meetings and hearings. it's quite a contrast to the fact that the majority in this congress, the republicans don't seem to be interested in actually doing things that

congress should do opposed to making political points. >> thank you. still ahead, a look at a name that popped up often today. sidney blumenthal, who he is and how he's related, ahead.

as the nation's attention was transfixed, elsewhere in washington, president obama took on the all lives matter reaction to the black lives matter movement. >> i think the reason that the organizers used the phrase "black lives matter" was not because they were suggesting nobody else's lives matter, rather what they were suggesting was, there is a specific problem that is happening in the african-american community that's not happening in other communities. and that is a legitimate issue that we've got to address. the african-american community is not just making this up. and then it's not just something being politicized. it's real. and then there's a history mind

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i think it is imminently fair to ask why sidney blumenthal had unfettered access to you, madame secretary, with whatever he wanted to talk about, and there's not a single solitary e-mail to or from you, to or from ambassador stephens. >> there is a villain in the gop version of the gop benghazi story, it was sidney blumenthal, including many discussioning politics and the situation in libya. the republican majority seems to have been troubled that blumenthal, a private citizen, may have had better access to the secretary of state than ambassador chris stephens, who was part of the state department infrastructure with long established systems for secured communication. clinton said most of her communications were not conducted by e-mail. a point corroborated by former ambassador michael mcfaul. as ambassador in russia, i enjoyed multiple ways to communicate with secretary clinton.

e-mail was never one of them. nevertheless, at least one republican remained concerned that clinton would have more contact with an old friend than an ambassador in the field. >> ambassador stephens did not have your personal e-mail address, we established that. >> that's right. >> did he have your cell phone number? >> no, but he had the 24-hour number of the state operations in the state department that can reach me 24-7. >> yes, ma'am. did he have your fax number? >> he had the fax number of the state department. >> did he have your home address? >> no, i don't think any ambassador has ever asked me for that. >> did he ever stop by your house? >> no, he did not, congressman. >> mr. blumenthal had each of those and did each of those things. this man who provided you so much on libya had access in ways that were very different than the access that a very senior diplomat had. >> joining me now, political editor and white house correspondent. sam, they seem focused on sidney blumenthal for a long period.

we should say that sidney blumenthal, i mean, on its face, has nothing to do with the attack on benghazi, the response to it, literally nothing. am i missing nothing? >> they were trying to tie the strategic advice that he was giving her on libya to some sort of use of resources by her and her staff that could have been diverted, but it was tangential and i'm not sure they made the case and it went into this, did he snap chat you, did he link in with you? and it became this farce about why sidney blumenthal was so important but chris stephens wasn't. >> well, it also to me emits this tremendous -- when she mentions the operation center, anyone who is around the state department talks about ops all the time. ops is a 24-hour control room. it's like out of a movie. they're monitoring the entire world. there just seemed to me an

absence of any basic knowledge of what the state department is and how it works. >> which is ironic considering how long they've been investigating this. you would think with all the people they've talked to, that they would have come to this hearing with a steady understanding of how the system works, what the chains of commands are. but that was sort of laid bare as not true by this hearing. the idea of the notion that 200 ambassadors all around the globe would be personally e-mailing hillary clinton with their security needs is just sort of ridiculous on its face. i think the bigger problem here is they stepped into a strategic trap, which is democrats on the committee have long been saying you brought in sidney blumenthal for this testimony, let's release this transcript, because it was all about correct the record, nothing to do with benghazi. as soon as trey gowdy started talking about sidney blumenthal, focusing on the role he played, it was obvious that elijah cummings, the ranking member, was going to be making that case. which is what happened. they closed out the first session of the hearing, and

that's the moment that everyone is going to remember from this hearing, that spat over this sort of tangential figure over a hearing that's supposed to be on benghazi. >> and this refusal to release the transcript, but there's been numerous times where witnesses have asked their transcripts be made public, and the majority on the committee, the republicans have refused it. and it's very hard watching this to think why -- if the people interviewed want to make their testimony public, why would you not want to make it public? >> it's true. the line that gowdy has used is if we make this transcript public, it will improperly influence future witnesses, as if they will know the questions we want to ask, they'll be able to tailor their answers. into -- therefore, we shouldn't make it public. but i have to say, there were conservatives very supportive of the benghazi inquiry on twitter saying this is silly, make the transcript public. get rid of this issue. blumenthal is the sort of weird figure, we don't need to harp on him.

make it public and move it to the side. >> there was an amazing moment which there was a motion whether to make it public and representative wes moreland said, aye and gowdy said no. and he said oh, no, got my signals crossed. sam, thank you. coming up next, a check-in on iowa where donald trump has been dethroned. new polling shows him in second behind ben carson, later ahead.

for the second straight day, we have a statewide poll in the gop that has ben carson leading all other candidates, including donald trump. yesterday was wisconsin survey that had carson at the top. today's quinnipiac poll comes from the all-important first state in the presidential primary, iowa. those results from ben carson ahead of donald trump by eight percentage points. that lead is in large part among his support with women. who overwhelmingly back carson over trump. following the release of that poll, donald trump's twitter account shared a bizarre tweet from a supporter that seemed to insinuate that the good people of iowa had problems with their mental state. it read, ben carson is now leading the polls. too much monsanto in the corn creates issues in the brain? this apparent swipe did not go unnoticed by "the des moines

register" that said donald trump just tweeted what about iowa corn? the tweet was deleted a short time later with trump seemingly throwing an intern under the bus. joining me now, contributor editor of rolling stone. his latest book is called "the divide." i have long thought that the place that you can see trump's support ebbing the first is in iowa, because the importance of evangelical christians to the voters there. >> to me, the surprise was trump was the front runner in that state until now. he's always going to have an uphill climb because he does poorly with evangelicals and women. which is just two huge groups that you have to overcome. that's only so many angry white

dudes you can get to go to the polls. iowa is a place where conservatives, religious conservatives traditionally do well. >> there's also i think you have huckabee has won there. santorum won there. people that are essentially viewed as religious conservatives. i think people watching this race unfold two aren't immersed in this world can underestimate how much ben carson connects with that audience. >> out of all the candidates who remain in the race, and are still substantive candidates left in the race, he's the one most unapologetically evangelical, maybe huckabee, if you still consider him part of the race. but he's the one out of the rest of them that will get the lion's share of that vote. >> because a donald trump win in iowa threatens a donald trump win in new hampshire, and if ben carson wins, all of a sudden that changes. >> right.

i'm sure that they feel less threatened, and this is to take nothing away from ben carson, but i'm sure the rubios and bushes in the world feel less threatened by ben carson than donald trump. carson is going to get a lot of support among other things because people just don't know who he is, and there's going to be that moment where they learn more about the candidate and his support ebbs and wanes. whereas trump, he has absolutely 100% name recognition already and his support is static. it's not going to go anywhere. if he wins, he's going to be there to stay. dwloong's -- i don't think that's the case with carson. >> when the quote young intern retweeted this thing, i thought maybe this is the way it will go down. if he starts to climb the polls, he'll turn his insult comic schtick from his fellow candidates to the voters of the state, in which he's polling poorly. >> it's amazing. when you see that, that's typically something you see with college athletes, they go on a bender after a game and they

tweet something dumb. and then the next day they say their account got hacked. but trump doing this is hilarious. >> they will retweet saying really gnarly things, like yes, these are my supporters. >> he's like trump the insult comic dog. that's his whole schtick on twitter. it's pretty funny. as twitter accounts go, he does have a sense of humor. on its own merits, he's a really good tweeter. but you cannot insult corn in iowa and expect to win. >> and in some ways what today shows that even donald trump won't do that. all these moments where people said he crossed the line, mexicans are rapist, john mccain and i like people that don't get cap churpd. this was the line. they find it out today.

corn and iowan's intelligence. >> wasn't that a thank you for smoking where you can't insult vermont's cheese or whatever it was? this is exactly the same thing. you just can't go there. even donald trump can't go there. >> thanks so much. >> that is "all in" this evening. "the rachel maddow show" starts now. what a remarkable spectacle. hillary clinton wrapping up tonight bere the house select committee on benghazi. i have to tell you the last time secretary clinton testified on this issue on ben ghazi she was recovering from a concussion, you might remember. her previous benghazi testimony. do you remember, she was wearing those prismatic glasses because she'd had a concussion, that made everybody worry about her health. well, tonight i think we know, we can put any health concerns aside. what a remarkable display of endurance. secretary clinton, i don't know offhand how old she is. i think she's probably 25 years older than i am.