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CNN NEWSROOM

Hillary Clinton Says Goodbye; Wacky Super Bowl Bets; Super Commercial Blitz; NASA's Day Of Sorrow

Aired February 1, 2013 - 14:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


JAKE TAPPER, CNN CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Jill Dougherty is there at the State Department. Jill, what is the mood like there?

JILL DOUGHERTY, CNN FOREIGN AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, I'll tell you. I can hear all the way down the hall. I'm in the booth, all the way down the hall. I can hear the yelling. It is very exciting and it will be an emotional thing.

This is where she said hello to the staff, and four years ago, and now in the same location she is going to say goodbye. There is a lot of emotion, a lot of stuff this State department has been through, especially over the last few months.

So you're going to hear her obviously say thank you, but I think the crowd itself, the staff here, many of whom go out into the field and risk their lives, will be very emotional.

TAPPER: All right, Jill Dougherty, let's listen in.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But none of us will ever forget your extraordinary leadership and each of us will always be deeply proud to say that we served in Hillary Clinton's State Department. And so now it's my great honor to introduce one last time the 67th secretary of state of the United States of America, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

HILLARY CLINTON, SECRETARY OF STATE: Thank you. Thank you. Well, just standing here, looking out at all of you, the people I have been honored to serve and lead and work with over the last four years is an incredible experience. When I came in to this building, as the secretary of state four years ago, and received such a warm welcome, I knew there was something really special about this place.

And that having the honor to lead the State Department and USAID would be unique and singular, exciting and challenging. It has been all of those things and so much more. I cannot fully express how grateful I am to those with whom I have spent many hours here in Washington, around the world, and in airplanes.

But I'm proud of the work we have done to elevate diplomacy and development, to serve the nation we all love, to understand the challenges, the threats, and the opportunities that the United States faces, and to work with all our heart and all of our might, to make sure that America is secure, that our interests are promoted, and our values are respected. As I look back over these past four years, I am very proud of the work we have done together. Of course, we live in very complex and even dangerous times as we saw again just today at our embassy in Ankara, where we were attacked and lost one of our Foreign Service nationals and others injured.

But I spoke with the ambassador and the team there. I spoke with my Turkish counterpart, and I told them how much we valued their commitment and their sacrifice. I know that the world we are trying to help bring into being, in the 21st Century, will have many difficult days.

But I am more optimistic today than I was when I stood here four years ago. Because I have seen day after day the many contributions that our diplomats and development experts are making to help ensure that this century provides the kind of peace, progress and prosperity that not just the United States but the entire world, especially young people so richly deserve.

I am very proud to have been secretary of state. I will miss you. I will probably be dialling up just to talk. I will wonder what you all are doing, because I know that because of your efforts day after day we are making a real difference.

But I leave this department confident, confident about the direction we have set, confident that the process of the QDDR, which we started for the first time, has enabled us to ask hard questions about what we do, how we do it and whether we can do it even better.

Because state and AID have to always be learning organizations. We owe it to ourselves. We owe it to the president. We owe it to the American people. And so I will be an advocate from outside, for the work that you continue to do here and at AID.

So it has been quite a challenging week saying goodbye to so many people and knowing that I will not have the opportunity to continue being part of this amazing team. But I am so grateful that we have had a chance to contribute in each of our ways to making our country and our world stronger, safer, fairer, and better.

Those of you who are staying, as many of you will, please know that I hope you will redouble your efforts to do all that you can to demonstrate unequivocally why diplomacy and development are right up there with defense.

How when we think about who we are as Americans, it's because we are united and committed across our government, to do whatever is required, to fulfill the missions we have assumed as public officials and public servants.

So next week, I would expect that all of you will be as focused and dedicated for Secretary Kerry as you have been for me, and that you will continue to serve President Obama and our nation with the same level of professionalism and commitment that I have seen firsthand.

On a personal basis, let me wish all of you the very best, whether you've been here a week or 30 or even 40 years, Pat. Let me give you the very best wishes that I can because I'm proud to have been a part of you.

I leave thinking of the nearly 70,000 people that I was honored to serve and lead as part of a huge extended family. And I hope that you will continue to make yourselves, make me, and make our country proud. Thank you, all, and God bless you.

TAPPER: Soon to be former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaking to some of the 69,000 State Department employees, who she is bidding farewell to today, soon to be replaced by former Massachusetts Senator John Kerry.

Jill Dougherty is in the room. Jill, there is a lot of praise for the secretary today, soon to be former secretary today. But her record is not an unblemished one, particularly in recent months because of the attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, she's taken some heat as of late.

DOUGHERTY: Yes. That's true. I mean, if you look at it in the Benghazi attack especially, that is a big blemish. It raised all sorts of questions about security. But, you know, Jake, I think that -- how long-term that will affect her legacy is still a question.

Really, what she did and this is a debate that is going on right now, did she really change the office? Did she do something? Did she accomplish something? And the debate is really look at the Middle East. She didn't solve the Middle East. Look at Russia, going down the tubes fast. Look at the Arab spring countries, in complete turmoil.

And also China, not particularly good, you can go down the list and on some of the hard issues, those really traditional foreign policy, international policy issues. Some critics would say she didn't accomplish much of anything and she leaves John Kerry a pretty fragile world.

Other people would say, no, she actually injected into the conversation, changed the conversation about international policy. What she talked about and what she followed through on were the issues of women's development, economic development, children and family rights.

And increasing the conversation as she would put it with people around the world, not just talking to governments, but beginning this two-way conversation with people all over the world so that debate is going to go on for a long time.

TAPPER: We're watching Secretary of State Hillary Clinton say farewell to some of the 69,000 State Department employees. John King and Gloria Borger are here in the studio with me.

She has now a record high in the "Washington Post"/ABC News poll, a 67 percent favorability rating and then in a CNN poll from December, Democrats, 65 percent of Democrats say they're likely to support Hillary Clinton if she seeks the Democratic nomination for president in 2016.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: It is never going to --

TAPPER: It's all downhill from there, right.

BORGER: It is all downhill from there. Look, this is somebody who has been out of politics, when you're secretary of state, there is an imposed moratorium on your political life. And that's worked really well for Hillary Clinton.

Because what she's done, when she was running for senator, she did a listening tour of the state of New York. When she was secretary of state, she did a listening tour of the entire world, right, over a million miles we have heard all of the numbers.

So the question that I have is, she's so popular now, she hasn't been in politics, if she decides to re-engage in the political world, how does she do that? We saw her at those Benghazi hearings. She did, I believe, want to get angry at Senator Johnson.

But did she do it in the best way? I personally think that it could have been handled better than it was and that she might have asked the wrong question. The question she asked is what does it matter?

The answer is, yes, it does matter. So we'll have to see how and if she re-engages in politics and whether she's better at it the next time around than she was when she lost to Barack Obama.

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's why it is such hard and such personal question. If you look at the field, the vice president of the United States, Joe Biden, would be a formidable contender if he decides. Again, he would be the oldest man, older than Ronald Reagan, older than John McCain.

Hillary Clinton is just behind him. So there is an age question. There's a health question. But if you look at rest of the field, no offense to Governor Cuomo or Governor O'Malley or Governor Hickenlooper or anybody else out there, they're not in Hillary Clinton's league if she wants to do it.

So when they come to her in six months or 18 months and say here is the data, we can raise all the money, you can do this. She is going to have to make such an intensely personal decision, do I want to get back to being so popular on a bipartisan basis around the world, not just in the country, to being that polarizing figure again.

It's a tough one, but think about how important she's been in the last two Democratic administrations. One was her husband's. He would not have been president. The Jennifer Flower scandal might have brought him down during the primaries if she hadn't have stood by him.

When the Monica Lewinski scandal happened, she stood by him. She was critical to him politically and a policy standpoint. And for this president to Jill's point, you can look at the record and raise questions. Where they too slow to react to the Arab spring? Have they been reactive not pro-active in other challenges around the world, whether it's Iran or something else. But after the Bush administration and U.S. credibility have gone down some around the world, mostly because of the Iraq war, and the bad feelings about that, she did at least raise up the stature of the United States because she came to the job already, a celebrity.

BORGER: She is a total rock star. I would argue that if she does decide to run, the waters part and every other Democrat steps aside because she would have a very, very good chance of beating any Republican.

TAPPER: All right, we're going to take a quick break. Brooke Baldwin will be on the other side of this. That was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying farewell and I say farewell as well.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: How about that animation? OK, it's Super Bowl wager doesn't have to be about sports. You can bet on anything. Just about anything these days, including little something called prop bets. You heard of this?

Here are a couple of examples for you. So what are the odds Jay-Z would join Beyonce on stage during her halftime performance or how long will it take Alicia Keys to sing the national anthem or how long will the post game handshake or hug last between coaching brothers Jim and John Harbaugh?

I want to bring in "Bleacher Report" national lead writer, Dan Levy. Dan, welcome. I know you wrote an article about the Super Bowl prop bets to avoid this year. Give me your top three to avoid.

DAN LEVY, NATIONAL LEAD WRITER, "BLEACHER REPORT": Yes, I love prop bets. Here's -- the first one I would avoid is the coin toss. Everyone loves to bet the coin toss, but I actually hate it because one, the money isn't even. You have to pay more than you'll get.

And it is 50/50. If you lose the coin toss, I think it puts a bad taste in your mouth for the entire rest of the game. I hate that because I've bet heads, always bet heads, it ends up tails. It ruins your whole Super Bowl.

BALDWIN: OK, what else?

LEVY: Right. The other one, an actual game one is the coach's challenge, which is phenomenal that you can bet on whether the first challenge of the game will be overturned or upheld. I wouldn't bet this if I saw the play that they were going to challenge.

I still would have no idea what the ref was going to do. To bet that in advance of the Super Bowl, I think you have a problem. If you're going to bet that someone there has a big problem.

And then the third one, you mentioned Beyonce. Yes, you can bet whether her hair will be straight or crimped. What color shirt she's going to wear?

BALDWIN: Are you serious? People really bet on this stuff? I mean, I know you're saying no, but --

LEVY: Well, people do. And the funny thing about this, I wrote about this, with that and how many times the Harbaughs will be shown on TV, their parents, I wonder if people who have the ability to control these, the directors, the wardrobe people, I wonder if they may be sneaking little bets. Somebody knows what Beyonce's hair is going to look like. You can make a little bit of money on that.

BALDWIN: Yes, watch the Twitter. Dan Levy, thank you so much. Note to self, don't bet on the hair.

Now for some Super Bowl eye candy, Madison Avenue's commercial ad blitz, usually it's provocative ads, featuring sexy ladies or cars or beer, but this year, some hot guys with some toned abs making their Super Bowl debut. Ladies or Gents, here's a peek.

My goodness, I think I'm blushing right now. Let me bring in Geek Factory's branding and social media consultant, Peter Shankman, in New York. I'm, like, whoo, this is on TV. Here we go.

PETER SHANKMAN, BRANDING AND SOCIAL MEDIA CONSULTANT: How are you doing, Brooke?

BALDWIN: I'm all right. I'm all right. So this is Calvin Klein and Super Bowl. I mean, they have never done a Super Bowl ad before so why now?

SHANKMAN: Well, there are a couple of reasons. First of all, women tend to buy men's underwear for their guys. Underwear is purchased by women. Secondly, look who is headlining the halftime show, this is Beyonce. You'd probably get a huge spike in the number of women watching the Super Bowl this year if for no other reason just for that.

And third, it is an interesting commercial because Super Bowl has been primarily men watching hot women and this is a really nice turn of play. It is going to be interesting to see what the critics are saying the next morning when they're critiquing all the commercials because it shuts down this is so sexist, the commercials are sexist towards women --

BALDWIN: A little equity.

SHANKMAN: And I would kill for those abs, come on.

BALDWIN: Come on. This isn't your body double, Peter Shankman? Get out of here. Let's talk about something else though because there is a new Go Daddy ad. This is the controversial lip locking session featuring a supermodel getting a little cozy with a nerd. Watch the clip.

So, listen, I watched this and I thought, how many times -- I'm sure this guy was, like, yes, we need a retake. I wonder how many takes they did with this. I'm a little uncomfortable watching such serious --

SHANKMAN: It is way too close. Way too close of an image. That's what Go Daddy is famous for. I mean, this guy will never do a better commercial for the rest of his life. But Go Daddy is famous for pushing the envelope.

They're also famous, one of the first companies to say, our commercial was banned and use that as a way to get people to go to their web site, go online and see the real one and while you're there, buy a few domain names. They take it every year to the --

BALDWIN: They take it to the edge. They do indeed. Go Daddy. Peter Shankman, thank you. That was fun.

SHANKMAN: My pleasure, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Before you watch Super Bowl XLVII on Sunday, find out what leads to the city of New Orleans. Watch our CNN's "Bleacher Report" special with Rachel Nichols. "Pick Up At New Orleans," airs tomorrow at 4:00 p.m. Eastern. We're talking to Rachel at the top of the hour.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: When you think about Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice, you think of our men and women in military don't you who have lost their lives in various countries around the world.

Well, today, NASA wants you to look to the skies and remember that our attempt to conquer space, while wondrous and limitless, has caught this country 24 space pioneers.

It was ten years ago today, the nation lost seven of them when "Columbia" broke apart during re-entry. In 1986, another seven astronauts died when "The Challenger" space shuttle exploded after takeoff.

And back in 1967, three astronauts died while training for the "Apollo I" mission. A fire ignited inside a command module during the training. So today, NASA held a wreath laying ceremony in honor of the fallen, which also includes seven astronauts and test pilots who died in training.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Today is the day of remembrance. We remember the astronauts who took the daring step of accepting the challenge of space flight. And for the "Columbia" crew, their mission was a fulfilment of their dreams to have an adventure.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The sorrow and impact of the tragedy of all of our families has been extreme. But just as a forest fire reduces beautiful foliage into ashes, those ashes ultimately become nourishment for new healthy growth. There are indeed small green chutes of hope that are springing up in our lives.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Their work does not come without tremendous risk and tragedy. Our failures are cause for reflection. Today's anniversary of "Columbia," like the anniversaries of "Apollo I" and "Challenger" last week are a call to rededicate ourselves to the mission to which so many of us have given so much and a few have given all.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)