Wikileaks releases more Clinton campaign emails

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Wikileaks releases more Clinton campaign emails

Reaction from the 'Special Report' All-Stars

This is a rush transcript from "Special Report with Bret Baier," October 21, 2016. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

DONALD TRUMP, REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: We just learned she tried to get $12 million from the king of Morocco for an appearance. More pay for play. That's why I'm proposing a path of ethic reforms to make our government honest once again.

(APPLAUSE)

VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: The press always asks me, don't I wish I were debating him? No, I wish we were in high school, I could take it behind the gym. That's what I wish.

(APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIPS)

BRET BAIER, ANCHOR: Vice President Biden on the trail today. And there you see Donald Trump talking about the latest WikiLeaks dump. And these e-mails suggesting that Huma Abedin, Clinton confidante, e-mailing about efforts to get a $12 million contribution to the Clinton Foundation that Hillary Clinton managed to do. "No matter what happens, she will be in Morocco hosting CGI," Clinton Global Initiative," event May 5th to the 7th, 2015. Her presence was a condition for the Moroccans to proceed, so there's no going back on this," continuing between John Podesta, Robby Mook and Huma Abedin. Giving some context, the Moroccans agreed to host the meeting with her participation. If she was not a part of it the meeting was a nonstarter. And it goes into the king personally committing approximately $12 million for the endowment and to support the meeting. "It will break a lot of china to back out now, and we had so many opportunities to do it in the past few months. She created this mess and she knows it" Huma Abedin writes.

Now, the Clinton campaign not going into details in all of these, but they point out this is after she left the State Department, and they want to make that clear, which is clear. But there are many other e-mails showing Clinton -- definitely interaction with the Clinton Foundation throughout her time as state.

Let's bring in our panel: Jonah Goldberg, senior editor of National Review; Leslie Marshall, syndicated talk radio host, and Fox News media analyst, host of Fox's "MediaBuzz," Howard Kurtz. OK, Howie, these e- mails keep coming. We keep on digging into them, some of them more interesting than ours.

HOWARD KURTZ, FOX NEWS MEDIA ANALYST: This I think is the worst one because so many of the other hacked e-mails involve what people around Hillary Clinton are saying, the internal sniping and all that. Here you have Huma Abedin said Hillary Clinton created the mess, Hillary Clinton herself. And yes, she had left the State Department, but she was still widely considered to be a very likely Democratic nominee. Everybody knew that.

And I think when we saw Chris Wallace ask Hillary Clinton about conflicts at the Clinton Foundation and when she tried to deflect that by talking about the great humanitarian work of the family foundation, we see that this is an area of vulnerability for her that she doesn't really have a strong answer to except to talk about Russian hackers and the works -- the good works of the foundation.

BAIER: Leslie?

LESLIE MARSHALL, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: You know, I don't agree. I don't agree this is the worst WikiLeak dump, if you will. One, she was not secretary of state at the time. She did not end up going to Morocco, so I don't know how much China was broken. And I know people might think I'm crazy, but I think we're more intelligent and not as naive to think whether it's the Clinton Foundation or other organizations, if somebody says, look, I have this big check, but you guys have got to show up at this, this happens. She was not running at the time. She was not secretary of state at the time. She did not end up going.

BAIER: You are saying it's politics as usual.

MARSHALL: I think it's partially politics. I know people may be sick of politics as usual, but if we are so naive to believe that after the election on November 8th, whether here in Washington or throughout our country every organization, it just comes to a stop if Donald Trump is president as opposed to Hillary Clinton, I think we're delusional.

BAIER: Jonah?

JONAH GOLDBERG, NATIONAL REVIEW: If the genesis of this had been when she was at the State Department it would be criminal. It's not, so it's just tawdry. And I agree this kind of thing happens a lot. I take a step back about this. I have always seen the Clinton Foundation -- yes, they do a lot of charitable good works. But by my lights, the charitable good works were a cost center like the electric bill. The reason why the foundation exists wasn't to do good work. It was to serve as sort of a place to park lugubrious sycophants like Sidney Blumenthal and other henchman, a place to serve as a super PAC, a place park her campaign while they were a government in exile. And they had to justify all of this by doing charitable stuff. The Medici built orphanages, too, but they didn't do it because they were wonderful people. It was about power politics. And that's what the CGI and Clinton Foundation has always been about.

MARSHALL: But they also revised their policies regarding taking foreign donations and said these six nations are going to go to international efforts, whether it's climate change, healthcare.

BAIER: It was a little murky there for a while. There was a long -- we're not going to take foreign donations except we will take them in the health initiative. So it was a little messy. How much is this breaking through, Howie? How much is any of this breaking through?

KURTZ: I think to a very limited degree for two reasons. One is, it tends to be complicated stuff. It's hard to explain, even in your set up, in a sentence what was wrong, you've got to know the context. You've got to know who the aides are, which country. And the second reason is that Donald Trump continues to dominate the news coverage. If we weren't talking about his female accusers and the answer that he gave at the debate to Chris Wallace about not necessarily accepting the outcome, then the Clinton Foundation and the emails and all of this would be getting a lot more oxygen.

BAIER: I mean, there's other parts of it. They're finding more classified e-mails in the exchanges. There are concerns about a special ops mission that has -- that was in some of these e-mails. And it seems to some that the FBI decided this was it, we're not going to go further down this road. What about this video that shows her talking about cyber security and the importance of it to State Department employees?

GOLDBERG: The problem is that it establishes that she's a complete hypocrite about a lot of these things. And it establishes a lot of things we already knew, that she knew she wasn't supposed to have this e-mail. It wasn't done for her convenience. Every single factual assertion that she made in her first U.N. press conference has been proven in the mainstream media, the supposedly pro-Hillary mainstream media, to be a demonstrable lie.

The problem is I think Howie is exactly right, is that Donald Trump would rather be at the center of a media controversy in a negative way than allow the limelight to move to Hillary Clinton and let her actually take heat in the public -- in a public arena. And it just sucks up all of the oxygen.

BAIER: Speaking of sucking up oxygen, I was at the Al Smith dinner last night. And there were some real eggs jokes that did not go on either side, actually. I know the focus has been on Donald Trump. But Hillary Clinton had some losers as well. Cardinal Dolan spoke about it on the "Today Show" about another conversation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CARDINAL TIMOTHY DOLAN, NEW YORK ARCHBISHOP: We were going in. I said, can we pray together as we were waiting to be announced. And after the little prayer, Mr. Trump turned to Secretary Clinton and said, you know, you are one tough and talented woman. And he said this has been a good experience, this whole campaign, as tough as it has been.

And she said to him, and Donald, whatever happens, we need to work together. I said, this is the evening at its best.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: Leslie, we didn't really see that part of it.

MARSHALL: No. I think this was an example of the public and private thing, right?

(LAUGHTER)

MARSHALL: They reached -- both of them laughed. Some of the jokes were very funny.

BAIER: The good ones are very funny.

MARSHALL: And actually, I had people tell me -- Republican friends tell me, you know, if I had seen that Hillary on the campaign trail I may not hate her so much. There were like, she was funny. She was more relatable. They liked her more.

I agree with you, there were some jokes that they call in comedy in L.A. where I live going blue. But I think that overall -- not just because she's my candidate, I thought that Donald kind of missed what it was about. You know what these things are about, which is, one the great work that Catholic charities does in raising the money, two, a little self- deprecation, and, three, some jabbing, roasting, being funny, not a campaign, not a debate, not a time to be attacking, and not a time to mention Catholicism in a negative light.

BAIER: Had he ended on the Melania speech joke, he has a whole crowd, if he dropped the mike and said, raise money for Catholic kids or kids in New York, it would have been fine.

KURTZ: I think we can all agree that going to a Catholic charity dinner and getting booed is not a good thing less than three weeks out. But at the same time, this is being so overplayed. I don't think it's going to move 10 votes. I know the media are obsessed with it, how badly Trump did. It's the classic example when a candidate is struggling, then everything -- an Trump clearly with self-inflicted wound at the debate and the polls slipping, everything becomes a metaphor for how badly the candidate is doing. The plane is stuck in the mud just like the campaign, and that's what I think happened here at the Al Smith event.

BAIER: We will see.

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