there is a reset button to erase this as a potential precedent for our country moving forward. we used to have this right. it is so screwed up right now. that does it for us tonight. it was an amazing day, rachel. we heard a lot about ambassador thomas pick ring. >> one word to describe today's 11-hour benghazi hearing was pointless, and that's if you are listening to what tray gowdy says he learned in this hearing. >> i imagine i would think more about what happened than all of you put together. >> it soon dissolved into bickering. >> i just don't understand the

preoccupation with sidney. he had unfettered access to you. >> i don't know what this line of questioning does to help us get to the bottom of the death of four americans. >> you had two ambassadors that made several requests, and here's what happened to their requests. >> she's not letting them get under her skin. >> sorry it doesn't fit your narrative, congressman. i can only tell you what the facts were. >> what is the purpose of this committee? it was five hours until it was asked, what is the purpose of this committee? by then it was a fair question. commentators had been struggling

to hear a purpose to what they were hearing and the kind of clear purpose was the kind of clear purpose the senator baker summeriz summerized, the watergate committee investigation that ultimately forced president nixon to resign. >> what did the president know and when did he know it? >> if the purpose of today's hearing was to find out what did secretary of state, hillary clinton, know about benghazi, and when did she know it, there were hours and hours and questions and speeches by the committee that had nothing to do with that. what we saw, as i suggested what happened here last night on this program, was really a debate, a debate between hillary clinton, and seven republican members of congress, and the republicans

composed of mostly 18 angry men was no match of hillary clinton's cool. it was in the 1964 seminal work understanding media that he said tv is a cool medium. he described the first televised presidential debate in 1960 as a contest between hot and cool, and richard nixon was hot while kennedy stayed cool, and he insisted cool will always win. today it's as if mill res read that last night, and gowdy never heard of him. joining us, our guests.

first of all, eugene, i want to offer you one of the lozenges hillary clinton needed. >> yeah, do you have a shot of bourbon. >> i want to go to richard first, because you have what i find so relative to what we are watching today. one of the reasons that the watergate committee worked so well, they left most of the important questioning to sam dash, and they asked questions that made sense and commentators were never turning and saying what are they talk about? we don't understand it. today they did it, what i consider the amateur way, they let the members ask questions themselves. there's a big difference between

those two methods, isn't there? >> the difference, as you have so correctly pointed out is that what we saw was this marathon of repetitive questioning and then speech, and then resorting to the silly season in washington where you have the spectacle of people, who are seemingly inexhaustible trying to try secretary clinton's patience, and as you point out, she did an admirable job in keeping her cool and responding to the questions even though some of them were insulting and some of them, many of them were repetitive after the first few hours. this was an endurance question and she passed that test very well. >> you have the experience of

being in the hot seat in a committee room like this, and in a much more intensely serious situation and at that time the entire presidency turned out to be at stake. what you watch today, if you -- if they had come to you and said how should we run this hearing, what would you have told them to do? >> well, the senate watergate committee was a model and did become a model and serve as a model for many years. ironically the question you just raised that baker asked, what did he know and when did he know it, was asked of me in 1973, and he was trying to pin me down on perjury at that point, and while today they were asking questions, the senator asked some of the tougher questions, and dash and thompson just did a cleanup. i would also tell you that the witnesses really in control in a

congressional hearing, unlike when i testified for ten days in a courtroom, the witness doesn't control where hillary clearly was in control today. >> tell us more about that. how does the witness get to control the congressional hearing? >> there are no limits on what that witness can say, no hear say rule, and no way to cut a witness off, and no question that hillary decided to answer questions in full and they have time limits on members of congress when they ask questions and you can filibuster through those if the man or woman is giving you a tough time and the witness knows their way around, the hill does that. >> we sought experience that she brought to this, that she did her first congressional testifying for her health care crusade over 20 years ago in the senate and the house, and so she was actually the most practiced

person at what we were seeing in that room today? >> obviously, and experienced showed. there was never a moment, i thought, when she was not in control of that process. you know, the thing that really struck me about the hearing, though, and i think this is a big question everybody should be asking, if the purpose was to find out what happened in benghazi, why did know one talk or ask about the people who killed our diplomats in benghazi, the terrorists or demonstrators, whoever they were, there was nothing about them. so it was not about the deaths and the attacks that actually happened, it was all about hillary clinton, and innuendo, basically, ensiiensiginsinuatin

less than she should have. >> how did it go? >> not good, and right after the 11-hour deal, he didn't learn anything new, so the question begs to be asked, what was the purpose of this entire hearing, which one republican told me, it kind of looked like a charade. i think what you are going to see now as we move into the speakership of paul ryan, we will see whether or not ryan embraces the committee to the degree boehner was forced to. remember, when boehner started in, he resisted the over khurs, he knew there was a possibility that his colleagues might overreach, and i think what you saw today was perhaps an example of that, they were disorganized in their questioning, and they were never able to really pin

hillary clinton down, and what struck me, they kept her in the chair and wearing her down, and waring her down, and then there was a barrage on e-mails and it was planned to drop the e-mails later in the day after all those hours of questioning, so when we look back at this, you will see in the boehner archives somewhere in the future, maybe he was right about not wanting to do this back in 2014. >> i want to show an exchange between the chairman and the ranking member, between tray gowdy and just how nasty this got. let's take a look at this. >> i would be happy to, but you need to make sure the entire record is correct -- >> that's exactly what i want to do. >> then go ahead. >> i'm about to tell you, i move we put into the record the entire transcript of sidney

blumenthal. if we release the e-mails, let's release the transcript -- >> why only blumenthal's transcript released? >> with all your experience in these hearings as a council, who do you blame for the committee getting out of control like that? >> well, i'm sorry to say that the whole premise of this hearing at a point where you have had numerous other hearings going over the same ground where the expectations of the chair and the leading members of the committee are not realized, they are not putting a dent in hillary clinton's version of the facts, which she has gone over repeatedly. tempers are frayed, and it becomes a food fight, and as

luke said, i would use the term kau pwaoubgy, it's all acted out so each member gets an opportunity to show that he's going to ask some tough question of a presidential candidate, and the american public is not served, and national security, more importantly, is not served when that subject matter is used for these kinds of purposes. >> before we go, your reaction to that moment where the two leading members of the committee get into that kind of spat? >> it's symbolic and imphrau mattic of the terrible polarization in washington. no committee should not conduct itself like that, and it's really embarrassing what the republicans have done here. >> thank you all for joining us tonight. i really appreciate it. gene is going to hang around for more. the name that kept coming up in

tod today's hearing was thomas pickering. donald trump loses the number one spot as ben carson surges past him. do you know the secret to a happy home in these modern times? it's a housewife who's in control of the finances. actually, any wife, husband, or human person can use progressive's name your price tool to take control of their budget. and while the men do the hard work of making money, she can get all the car insurance options her little heart desires. or the women might do the hard work of making money. [ chuckling ] women don't have jobs. is this guy for real? modernizing car insurance with -- that's enough out of you!

the name your price tool, only from progressive. where is your husband? the name your price tool, only from progressive. your loving touch stimulates his senses and nurtures his mind. the johnson's scent, lather, and bubbles help enhance the experience. so why just clean your baby, when you can give him

we have breaking news. paul ryan has decided he has enough to run for speaker. he wrote i never thought i would be speaker, but i pledge to you if i could be a unifying figure, i would serve and go all in after talking with so many of you and hearing your words of encouragement, i believe we are ready to move forward as one united team and i am ready and eager to be our speaker.

the house leadership vote is next thursday. up next, ambassador thomas pickering will react to what was said about him at that hearing today. >> how do you feel you did, madam secretary? you feeling all right?

today the chairman of the benghazi committee justified the need for yet another investigation of benghazi by finding fault with all of the other previous investigations beginning with the state department's accountability review board which was chaired by former ambassador, thomas

pickering, a career diplomat who served in six countries and also served as under secretary of state and ambassador to the united nations. elijah cummings rose to the defense of the ben pickering and his investigation of benghazi, the investigation that ambassador pickering conducted. >> he's an 83-year-old gentleman named ambassador pickering, and i've heard a lot of testimony, and i was there for his deposition, and it was also trance scribed, and i don't remember which it was and before his testimony before the oversight committee, and when he talked about his appointment to the arb, he talked about what an

honor it was. what bothers me about what has gone on, when there are attacks that, it's like attacking him and at 83-year-old i refuse to sit here and let that go by. i remember listening to him, and i said to myself, you know, this is the kind of guy that we all ought to honor, serving under presidents for 40 years, democrat and republican, high up on the chain with regard to integrity. i don't know how you even attack this guy, all right? one of the things he said in his testimony, he said -- and this was -- you appointed him, and he talked about the appointment, and i quote from a june 4th testimony, he said, chris stevens worked for me as my special assistant for two years when i was under secretary of

state. this was not any kind of vendetta, but i felt that chris gave me two wonderful years of his life in supporting me in very difficult circumstances, and that i owed him, his family and the families of the other people who died the best possible report we could put together, and he went on to say some other things that were so powerful. then when i hear the implications of people attacking the report, talking about he was not independent or they were not independent, it's like an attack against him. >> joining us now, ambassador thomas pickering and also michael mcfall that served as ambassador to russia from february 2012 to february 2014 and also an msnbc contributor.

what was your reaction about what was said about you today and your investigation during that hearing? >> well, one can't help but be pleased and a little embarrassed about the kind of remarks of representative elijah cummings from maryland, for whom i have a great deal of respect because i watched him throughout the process and i think he was a defender of probe tea and what i would call honesty, and calling it what it was, and somebody in my position can't be anything but obliged, and it was also in every sense of the world to help defend the integrity of our report, which we labored mightily over for a period of

several months, and in every since of the word did the best we could and i was honored to work with admiral mike mullen, and three other distinguished servants at the time to produce the report we felt it was in every sense of the word something we had to do in order to avoid making the same mistakes in the future, something that if you go back and read some of the other accountability review reports, flows through them, that we have a wonderful capacity to react rapidly, and indeed emotionally as soon as the report comes out and it kind of dribbles out into partial fulfillment. in some cases, congress is no longer impressed by the problem at hand and in some cases because of bureaucracy loses hope or spirit or conviction as

time passes between the tragedy and the present. >> ambassador, trey gowdy criticized your investigation and report on several fronts, the way you conducted the interviews and who you did not interview and the fact there are not transcripts of the interviews, and what is your response to the criticisms that he leveled? >> we interviewed over 100 people. we made a question of the interviews which is available, i'm sure to congressman gaudy. we did not make transcripts because it was important for us to record the key points and fundamentals rather than every word being said and we did not consider ourselves a court of law, or a body that would lead in one way or another to criminal indictments of any kind. we did consider ourselves absolutely required to draw the principle lessons and make exact

and careful findings and make recommendations and i think all of that was supported by the work we did. we interviewed everybody that we could identify with the situation in one way or another from all the material we had. we had never said, i don't believe any of us, but certainly me in my capacity as chairman, that we did absolutely everything right and nothing could further add to our report, and i think certainly i have been always open minded that if new information became available, i would do my best to examine it against the record and what i knew and give you or anybody else my careful opinion on that score. i have tried to do that as i have gone along and i have not with great humility found anything that i think would change our fundamental recommendations and i would be the last thing in the world to tell you nothing like that exists or could be found, but i have been waiting with all of these reports to see if there

was something new, and i don't at this point, from everything i have seen and heard if all the reports found anything new, but it helped me convince me we did a good job because they came to the same or very similar conclusions. >> if you found nothing new in today's hearing that puts you in the company of chairman -- the chairman of the committee. let's listen what he said about that tonight after the hearing. >> reporter: what were the most important new things you learned today? >> i think some of jimmy jordan's questioning. well, when you say new today, we newsom of that, we knew about the e-mails, and if you are talking about testimony, she has not testified today -- >> if you can't learn something new in over nine hours of testimony, i don't know what it's going to take.

there's a lot of talk today about what if -- it's kind of indirect, but what if chris stevens would have had her personal information, would he had had better information and gotten what he was asking for? >> being on with ambassador pickering n. my world of foreign policy experts, there's nobody that has a higher reputation and it's a nonpartisan representation, and the very idea, mike mullen, too, somehow this was partisan strikes me as absurd and depressing. now to answer your question, and the other thing, i did not get to see all nine hours because i have a job here at stanford so i couldn't watch the whole day, but my biggest impression was, i was listening to people that i don't think understands how the state department works, and now

with something that has 40 years more experience than i did, and the premise that we would be e-mailing the secretary of state, it doesn't work that way. by the way, i don't think it worked that way with secretary rice, because there's a process that you use. the most important process you use is called cables. you write cables and you have a special channel if you want to communicate directly to the secretary, if you are an ambassador, but that's the process by which the state department moved information up the chain, and then there's phone calls and video confere e conferenci conferencing, and then if you need to get something quickly to the secretary as i did from time to time, you deal with her trusted aides. you heard a lot about jake sullivan today, and jake i could always e-mail and i knew he would communicate to secretary clinton if it was something urgent. i just thought it felt a

little -- we need to understand the process within the bureaucracy before you judge it. one last thing i want to say, a very important point, there's an enter agency process. another key piece where you are not e-mailing directly the secretary, you are actually, as when i was ambassador, interacting with the national security council, and my colleagues at the pentagon to deal with policy issues. >> ambassador pickering, your investigation and report was the one that specified -- >> let me make one comment. thanks, mike, for your very kind remarks which i appreciate immensely. i worked for kissinger as

somebody that organizes the channel and i set up the for the first time the special channel to the secretary and i also had from time to time the privilege and option of communicating directly with the president as his personal representative through the state department cables, which, in fact, are the preferred way of communicating, and people tend to forget that in the days of e-mail but they exist and they are there and they are reliable and get information where it's supposed to go. >> thank you both very much for joining us tonight. appreciate it and thank you. >> thank you. up next, what impact will today's benghazi hearing have on hillary clinton's presidential campaign? later, the main super pac backing donald trump, the one he pretended was not backing him is now shutting down.

many wrinkle creams come with high hopes, but hope... doesn't work on wrinkles. neutrogena® rapid wrinkle repair has the fastest retinol formula... to work on fine lines and even deep wrinkles in just one week. neutrogena®.

i came here because i said i would, and i've done everything i know to do as have people with whom i worked to try and answer your questions. i cannot did anymore than that. 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. >> joining us now are casey hunt, an msnbc political correspondent, and jordan reardon. no days off, no holidays, even when you are testifying to congress. for hillary clinton and her presidential campaign, today could be a help or hurt her or could have meant nothing, so what was it? >> i think it was helpful. clintons are helpful in their enemies. so when you have obvious overreach and obvious partisan

politicized hearings, and it was primetime, it really elevates hillary clinton, and it allowed her to sit there and look like a president. >> casey hunt, what is the republican reaction in washington? is it easy to find republicans to tell you why this was great for them? >> lawrence, it has been pretty difficult throughout the course of the day, which tells you more than anything what democrats will say or already are saying as a presidential performance for her, and it did elevate her as joy was saying, and i am having trouble having people who are saying this helped my guy, who is returning against hillary clinton. i wouldn't go say it's radio silence, and donald trump, of course, was on saying he thinks

maybe biden wishes he would have gotten in the race, and that's the most aggressive anybody has been on this and the reality is between the focus of the congressional republican party, people this presidential field want distance from, and the way mccarthy's comments played in the hearing and then the way it played out with hillary clinton seeming composed throughout the hearing, and this is something they are not celebrating at this point. >> one of the wraps hillary clinton gets as a candidate, she gets stiff and robotic and can feel programmed, when she is going to be human and loosen up, and this committee offered her that opportunity today with many openings for her to sound very human. i want to go to one example of it right now where adam smith was asking her about the responsibility of all the personnel under her jurisdiction at the state department.

let's listen to this. >> how many personnel roughly? >> 70,000 between the state department and usaid. >> and you are responsible for all of them as well? >> that's true. >> can any human being on the face of the planet protect every one of them every second of every day? that's a rhetorical question. >> we can try. we can try. >> that was one of those moments, and there was another when she gave her account of how she experienced the hours of the benghazi attack, and how they learned that one of our people was dead and they were still looking for chris stevens and they couldn't find him and they finally found his body -- >> and it's moments you don't get to the debate stage? >> yeah, and you get as much time was want. you are in control and you are the witness.

that was not just human, but it was gripping. >> let's listen to the part you just referred to. >> one of the horrors of the hours after the attack was our failure to be able to find where the ambassador was. we were desperate, and we were trying to call everybody we knew in benghazi and libya, get additional help, and what appears to have happened at some point later, is that libyans found ambassador stevens, and they carried him to the hospital in benghazi and libyan doctors labored nearly two hours to try and resuscitate him, and i -- i mention all of this because i want not just the committee

members, but any viewers in the public to understand that this was the fog of war. >> joy a. pretty convincing description of the fog of war? >> as i was watching and listening to hillary clinton one of the things i kept thinking was, if you think about how you take a former first lady, a wife of a president and translate her to a president herself, we have to put aside the things we even presume about women and the wife, is she going to be a vessel for bill clinton. today her state department tenure, she became the most fully fleshed out secretary of state that most americans have ever seen, describing the job and all the aspects of the military response, and describing them where she will be seen through the state department career for better for worse, and i think it was an

important moment for her? >> and do the other candidates embrace this committee or not? >> we have marco rubio and jeb bush saying she did a horrible job. casey, i think you set the record for on duty msnbc today. what time did you start this morning? >> reporter: i was on campus at 5:30 this morning. >> you have the record. you win. >> it's all good, darkend halls. up next, the super pac backing donald trump isn't backing donald trump anymore. wow! this toilet paper reminds me of a washcloth! new charmin ultra strong, dude.

cleans so well it keeps your underwear cleaner. (secretly) so clean you could wear them a second day. tell me i did not just hear that! (sheepishly) i said you could not that you would! new charmin ultra strong with its washcloth-like texture, helps clean better than the leading flat-textured bargain brand. it's 4 times stronger, and you can use up to 4 times less. it cleans better. you should try it, "skidz." we all go. why not enjoy the go with charmin?

it was a massive competence at every level and the buck stops at the top. if hillary clinton going to go around and taking credit for her time as secretary of state then she must take responsibilities as failures that happened under her watch and this was the costliest of all under human rights. >> i didn't write down every time hillary clinton said i take responsibility today, but it was

several times. >> and that argument for marco rubio who is running for the neo-conservative party, his george w. bush has been getting that same argument, he has to take part in 9/11. >> let's listen to what jeb bush said about the hearing today. >> i didn't see much of it, but she's not accepting responsibility. two weeks ago in the debate, she said libya was a great example of smart power. i think it's in total chaos and leading from behind was not the way to deal with this problem and the security problems that exist created a situation are to the lives lost. >> what he meant was i didn't see the part where she accepted responsibility. >> not only that, he has not been paying attention at all for the last three years, because

she had accepted responsibility immediately. she never -- you just can't say that, at she hasn't taken responsibility. >> we have a new poll here, the democratic field in iowa with ben carson pushing ahead of donald trump, and that's here somewhere. ben carson in iowa is now at 28 to that trump's humiliating 20. that's outside the margin of error. that's a real poll. what is he going to say about that? >> and there has been an incident where team trump had to retract a tweet. >> we happen to have that tweet, and it's about these stupid people of iowa who are thinking about this. he retreated one of these things that said ben carson is now leading in the polls in iowa,

too much monsanto in the corn -- >> what does that mean? >> donald, he's fine with that. and then he got the tweet taken down or something, and then, of course, blamed the interns. the young intern who accidentally did a retweet. >> donald trump, i have to say, of all people in his position, it can't be more clear who is running his twitter, it's donald trump, those are his fingers. it's such a uniquely crazy twitter feed, and there's only one brain that can do that. >> very entertaining. >> the interns are fighting to be the one, the terrified one to try to take the phone away. >> this is iowa coming to its senses of sorts, gene. >> i would not say that. >> what would you say? >> listen to ben carson, what he has been saying lately? it's the evangelicals in iowa, i

think, and ben carson is a man of deep and abiding faith, and he projects that, and he talks about that, and they get that in iowa, i think, and the republican primary voters, evangelicals play a huge role in that state and i think they are gravitating to him, and will likely stick. ben carson certainly could win iowa. >> there's good old-fashioned politics, too, he has the most actual individual donors of any of the republican candidates and raised more money than jeb or marco rubio and the third person haorbgsever combined, $20 million, and he has two super packs working on his behalf. ben carson is probably the favorite as far as iowa goes. >> rick santorum won iowa and a lot of republican nominees have not one iowa. a quick break and we're back with more.

the super pac that team trump set up is closing down, you know that super pac he claimed he did not have? listen to this. this is from the guy running the super pac. mr. trump said he did not doesn't have a super pac, so to honor his wishes i'm shutting my organization down. if he doesn't have a super pac, they don't have to shut down anything, right? in other words, he doesn't have a super pac, and in order to make that true, i am going to shut down his super pac. >> everybody has a reverence that speaks about trump, and even the super pac is cowed under his president, and -- >> and the laws of causeality

may not apply. >> he said there was no super pac and then turns out there's a super pac but they get rid of it. >> if he had one, it would be huge and fabulous, and the best super pac you have ever seen. >> let's listen to what eric cantor said today on the bcc about donald trump? i have it on paper. he said i wouldn't say trump is reflective of the republic ton party and lot of the tea party issues out there, they are more populist radicals, so there he is in one shot taking on donald trump and -- >> spoken like a guy that got taken by a tea party candidate. i think there's a lot of anger, and i experienced it just talking with republicans, they are shocked and alarmed of the

trump phenomenon, so attacking it is the way to go, but the problem is these are their voters siding with trump in the polls and this was the base which was encouraged by people like aeric cantor. >> yeah, all the stuff they knew they couldn't do. ben carson, who is now technically on a book tour, not on a campaign for president, apparently that's how he describes his activities for the next couple weeks, he was in missouri today and talking about the hearing, the benghazi hearing, and he says he doesn't think it's partisan at all, and he says she is glad she finally got around to answering questions and obviously he did not see a minute of it. >> apparently not. he's on a book tour. >> he stated he has seen enough of it where he said hillary

clinton should be in jail, there are -- >> yeah, he did say that, actually. >> and trump is always saying, if she continues to be a candidate, as if the fbi is coming with handcuffs, any day now. that seems to be, though, they have amped up their audiences so high on this, that that's what has to make today such a disappointing day for their audiences because that big moment didn't come -- >> i think you cannot talk about the benghazi hearings, and it was a conspiracy theory and like a lot of things that happened in the house of representatives with republicans in the -- >> thank you for joining us tonight. we'll be right back. proven to hydrate dryness, illuminate dullness, lift sagging, diminish the look of dark spots, and smooth the appearance of wrinkles.

high performance skincare™ only from roc®.

chris christie is being sued by a nurse. guess whose side i'm on?

that's next. ♪ bleeding gums? you may think it's a result of brushing too hard. it's not. it's a sign of early gum disease... listerine(r) can help reverse... early gum disease in just two weeks. listerine(r). power to your mouth™!

casey hickox, the doctors without borders nurse, kristi forced her into quarantine an ebola sued him today. she is seeking money for damages. and other employees are also named in the lawsuit and the suit claims she was illegally held after arriving at the airport october 24th, 2014, for three days in an improperly heated isolated tent. she tested negative and showed no signs of ebola. >> when you choose to detain somebody out of fear, then that's discrimination and not based on any constitutional law. >> chris christie's office said

they could not comment on pending legal matters, but they will be able to settle which, they eventually well because they will not dare take this it's friday, october 23rd. right now on "first look," breaking news. one dead at a college campus where a shooting took place just hours ago. after an eleven-hour, often contentious and highly political back and forth, did the benghazi committee learn anything new in the investigation of four murdered americans? next, to extreme weather with texas bracing for an absolute deluge. and on the pacific side preparing for hurricane patrice yeah, a monster category 5 storm. new details this morning surrounding a u.s.-led commando rescue mission in iraq in which an american soldier was killed by isis militants. the suspect in the road rage killing of a 4-year-old girl faces the judge. that and so much more on a busy friday. "first look" starts right now.