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All In with Chris Hayes, Transcript 10/23/15

Guests: Karen Finney, Ben Domenech, Matt Welch, Kaci Hickox, Jeb Lund

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voice-over): Tonight on ALL IN -- HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It`s been quite a week, hasn`t it? HAYES: Hillary Clinton having the time of her campaign, successfully thwarting the Benghazi committee. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Don`t call that witness. CLINTON: I really don`t care what you all say about me. It doesn`t bother me a bit. HAYES: Tonight, how conservatives are spinning what happened on the Hill. Then, a year after the Ebola panic, and nurse Kaci Hickox imprisoned in a tent. KACI HICKOX, NURSE: I have been asymptotic since I`ve been here. HAYES: She`s suing governor Christie. GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE (R), NEW JERSEY: Get in line. I`ve been sued lots of times before. HAYES: Kaci Hickox will join me tonight. Plus, Jeb Bush cuts his campaign payroll by 40 percent. Donald Trump slumps in the Iowa polls. And Ben Carson is on a book tour. DR. BEN CARSON (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The book is about our Constitution. HAYES: Tonight in the first inaugural edition of "ALL IN Presents: A Candidate Book Report." UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This book is really bad. HAYES: ALL IN starts right now. (END VIDEOTAPE) HAYES: Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. It`s the day after. And by acclimation or something very close to it, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton won with a commanding, impressive performance before the House Select Committee on Benghazi. And while we will take a longer look at conservative reaction in a moment, this headline might just sum it up. "The conservative reviews are in: Benghazi hearing a bust." From the moment the gavel struck last night, finally ending an 11-hour hearing, the former secretary of state was more liberated than usual to focus solely on the Democratic nomination for president. Today in her first post-hearing speech before an exhilarated home style crowd, the DNC Women`s Leadership Forum in D.C., Clinton took a victory lap. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) (CHEERS AND APPLAUSE) CLINTON: It`s been quite a week, hasn`t it? As some of you may know, I had a pretty long day yesterday. But I finally got to answer questions, something I`ve been pushing for literally a year. And I am just grateful. I recovered my voice, which I lost a little bit. But as I said at the start, I wanted to rise above partisanship and reach for statesmanship. And that is what I tried to do. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Not coincidentally, at the same event today former governor, former Senator Lincoln Chafee shocked everyone and dropped out of the presidential race. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) LINCOLN CHAFEE (D), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: But after much thought I`ve decided to end my campaign for the president today. Thank you. But I would like to take this opportunity one last time to advocate for a chance to be given to peace. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: As noted by "Politico", asked by reporters afterwards why he dropped out, he said, "obviously, it`s a good week for Secretary Clinton." And while Chafee never posed any real threat to Clinton, he`s now the third politician to drop their actual or potential run for Democratic nomination in the past week, joining former Senator Jim Webb and Clinton`s most formidable potential opponent, Vice President Joe Biden. Clinton also got a very big labor endorsement today from AFSCME, which said in a statement in part, "Hillary Clinton will tackle the issues that affect ordinary Americans` quality of life like paid family and sick leave, the crushing burden of student loan debt and retirement security", words that could have just as easily applied to Senator Bernie Sanders, one of the most labor friendly people ever to run a Democratic primary. But instead, the endorsement went Clinton`s way as has the latest poll in Iowa. In the first Quinnipiac poll of that state since the Democratic debate, it`s Clinton 51 percent, Sanders 40 percent. About a month ago in the same poll the two were basically tied. And capping off her 24-hour post-hearing tour, Clinton spoke exclusively with my friend and colleague Rachel Maddow. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: You don`t have the nomination, and there is already a sitting Republican member of Congress from Alabama, Mo Brooks, who says he is ready to impeach you on the first day of your presidency. (LAUGHTER) CLINTON: Isn`t that pathetic? It`s just laughable. It`s so totally ridiculous. MADDOW: But that is where the Republican Party is. It`s probably good politics in Republican politics for him to say that. CLINTON: It perhaps is good politics with the most intense extreme part of their base. I guess that is. Or otherwise, why would they be doing it? (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Rachel`s full interview with Hillary Clinton tonight on "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW" just after this. So, stick around. One more note, the Clinton campaign tells NBC News that the hour after the Benghazi hearing ended last night was the biggest fund-raising hour so far of the entire campaign and they did not send out a solicitation for donations. Joining me now Karen Finney, strategic communications adviser and senior spokesperson for Hillary Clinton 2016. How much time went into prepping for this hearing? KAREN FINNEY, HILLARY CLINTON 2016: I mean, how about her whole tenure as secretary of state? I mean, you know, she obviously did prepare for this interview -- for this appearance, but you know -- I mean, as Chairman Gowdy himself pointed out, he didn`t really ask anything new, right? I mean, most of the questions were questions that have been asked and answered numerous times before. So they asked the questions and she answered them for some 11 hours. HAYES: Here`s what struck me about the hearing. I`ve known people that have worked for Secretary Clinton in various capacities. People speak -- whatever your view of her politics, whether you agree with her ideologically or not, people who work with her just say essentially uniformly impressive things about her as a -- her competence, her ability to sort manage decisions, keep things in her head. And I thought yesterday was an interesting display of that quality, which is not a display that you -- which is not a quality you can display easily on the campaign trail in an odd way. It was sort of like this was a sort of glimpse into oh, this is how this person runs things and commands information. FINNEY: I think that`s right. I mean, look, I think ultimately it doesn`t really matter how much time she spent preparing. I think what matters is what she did yesterday. And I think what she did yesterday was stellar in terms of to your point answering their questions and very complex questions, right? Even though they kept trying to kind of dumb them down to certain talking points, I think, you know, she said at the beginning felt a responsibility to the people who lost their lives to give full, thorough answers. And I think in some of these exchanges, that`s what she was basically doing. And I think -- you know, I think you`re right. It gave people similar to the debate in some instances, that it gives people an opportunity, kind of in an unfiltered way, to get a sense of how a person thinks. HAYES: This is a thing I think that happens to candidates and happens to Republicans and Democrats, where a caricature gets built around a person. I think this was true of Mitt Romney in that first debate in 2012, when people were like oh, this doofus. And it was like, oh, well, that guy`s a pretty smart impressive dude, like he actually knows what he`s talking about. And there was this sort of narrative that got built about Hillary Clinton, she`s awkward on the campaign trail, she`s this or that. It seems to me part of what`s happened in the last few weeks is that she`s had the opportunity to just command the stage in a way and sort of show what she is and who she is. FINNEY: Well, I think people have gotten more of an opportunity to see who she is. I mean, this is who she is on the campaign trail. I mean, remember, a lot of the coverage ends up being a snippet here or a snippet there. People don`t necessarily sit there and -- HAYES: They don`t stay for the full 11 hours. FINNEY: I know. Or even the full hour when she`s doing a town hall meeting conversation. HAYES: That`s right. FINNEY: Sure. So I think there are a couple of things. Certainly, again, I think people got kind of an unfiltered opportunity to see who she is and how she thinks both at the debate and yesterday. And certainly yesterday, for a lot of hours, and obviously she was very impressive throughout the whole thing. I think that was part of what was -- what people were really impressed by, was that, you know, as the hours went on she was just as steady. And to me, that`s what you would want in a president obviously. So I thought she came off very presidential. But I think the other thing that`s important is, you know, this summer while there was all this other hoopla and spin going on, our team on the ground, I want to give some credit to our folks at the grassroots level who`ve been doing the work, knocking on doors, doing organizing events. You know, she`s been campaigning very hard talking about, you know, the issues again in those town hall settings, in those settings that don`t always get the coverage. HAYES: Those get very weighty and wonky and -- I`ve actually watched full transcripts of them. FINNEY: So I think part of what we`re seeing I hope is the fruits of that work. That when you do the work when you build the infrastructure, when you, you know, talk to people, when you`re a candidate, when you`re lucky enough to have such a great candidate as we do and who is out there talking to people, and also -- you know, the other thing about her, Chris, I think is really important, she listens. I mean, a number of the things in terms of the policies we`ve put out were ideas that came from conversations that she had on the campaign trail where some people might say -- well, talking about substance abuse, that`s not a top polling issue. Well, you know, to her, it`s what people are talking to her about. So her point was then we should be talking about it. HAYES: It`s pretty remarkable how much that is coming up on the campaign trail. Karen Finney, it`s always a pleasure to have you here. Thank you for dropping. FINNEY: Good to see you. HAYES: All right. Many conservatives and Republicans seem to have built up in their minds that Hillary Clinton`s testimony would be the day that brought her down. But in an early indicator it wasn`t going quite that well for Republicans. FOX News stopped live coverage of the Benghazi hearing, returning to regular programming as the hearing played soundless in a box. A sampling of tweets from various conservatives was telling. "Why doesn`t Pompeo just go over and swear her in for president now," tweeted John Podhoretz of "The Weekly Standard". "If he goes on like this, he`ll practically get her elected. From Matt Lewis, "The Daily Caller", "Ever since the McCarthy gaffe, everything has worked out for Hillary. The debate, Biden, and now this hearing, she even seems more likeable now." And from radio host Erick Erickson, "The Benghazi hearing should not be but is a waste of time." One our next guests, Ben Domenech, tweeted, "This hearing`s actually going better than I expected." When he was asked, how long were your expectations then? He answered, "Expected Jar Jar, got ewoks." (LAUGHTER) HAYES: Lien of the day. Joining me now -- you`re laughing at your own tweet, which I -- BEN DOMENECH, THE FEDERALIST: No. HAYES: It was a good line. Publisher of "The Federalist", senior fellow at Heartland Institute. And Matt Welch, editor in chief of "Reason" magazine. What did you think yesterday? I mean, what was the expectation? And what do you get? DOMENECH: I think in the situation, I`m just laughing thinking about the Jar Jar sitting in the hearings asking questions. And I don`t want to do a Jar Jar impression. I think that in this case, these types of hearings never really work. HAYES: Yes. DOMENECH: They don`t work. They make the witness sympathetic. You have all of these questions being peppered at them for hours. And really, I think that the problem there is that a lot of members of Congress, and this is true of members of both parties, don`t really approach hearings the right way. They use it more as an opportunity to speak than they do as an opportunity to find out new facts. I think in this case, there were a handful of facts that the Republicans brought forward. I think obviously, the one that they`re most likely to sort of use in the days ahead is going to be this indication that she was saying one thing to her daughter at the same time that she was saying different things -- or that her subordinates were saying different things to the American people about Benghazi. But overall, I think this is a conversation about a scandal that has more to do with that point you were making earlier about her competence. HAYES: Well, that`s the word. That`s what struck me about yesterday. Is let`s divide two different types of things, right? Benghazi was pretty clearly a failure. I mean, four Americans died at an American facility. It was a failure. It was a failure that involved diplomatic security. And you can say that failure ran all the way to secretary of state, right? And you can say as I evaluate this one running for president. But that is a different thing than a scandal, right? And that`s what kept coming up to me yesterday was yes, this thing that happened was bad and people should price that into how they assess someone that`s running for office. But that is not a scandal. They kept looking for the scandal. MATT WELCH, EDITOR IN CHIEF, REASON MAGAZINE: One part of the failure -- and they`ve been looking for that scandal, and I apologize for having Hillary Clinton`s voice from yesterday here -- is that the Libya intervention itself, she keeps defending it and she defended it yesterday. Smart power at its best was her phrase using that last week. And yesterday, she was saying it was remarkable and all these things. Republicans were hitting her and rightly so on this, but they`re not going to hit it in the same way that, say, a non-partisan libertarian might because a non-partisan libertarian is more anti-interventionist than your mainstream Republican. HAYES: And I said that yesterday to Congressman Adam Smith who was on the committee. He was saying they were talking about the Libya policy in the very beginning there was a period on that. I said, well, you know, a Republican could say, look, but for the Libya policy blah, blah. He said, well, yes, you could make that argument but that`s not what the select committee on Benghazi`s about. And that`s a fair point. Again, I`m not even someone who I think there are tremendous criticisms of the Libya policy to be offered. But that is not a scandal. It felt yesterday like we`re -- I don`t even know what the charge is. That`s my point. WELCH: Yes. The way I look at these kind of hearings as a citizen is not necessarily a performance review, oh, she won her performance. Like Janet Reno won her performance on the Waco hearings 12 20 years ago but that still wasn`t a very good thing. I look at it as what would happen if you took some radio talk show hosts and put them in a room and gave them subpoena power. It would be a clown show for sure. DOMENECH: I think that`s a little unfair. WELCH: No, but they would also -- if you gave them subpoena power they would also dig up spare bits of actually interesting information and there would be moments of actually interesting back and forth. And I think there was yesterday. It was just about 25 seconds of an 11-hour hearing. DOMENECH: Your point is the critical one, which is that what you`re actually criticizing overall is the approach that Secretary of State Clinton had to foreign policy during her tenure. HAYES: Yes. DOMENECH: The decision that`s she made -- HAYES: Totally. DOMENECH: That`s not a scandal but that is something that has left us with all sorts of bad situations all around the world. She`s going to have to defend in the future. HAYES: Right, exactly. And have at it. You know what I mean? I have no -- I`ve got no dog in that fight. But the supposition here always is, and the tone, right? Always is, there is some smoking gun somewhere. I mean, that`s when we got all these paranoid fantasies that she issued a stand-down order, right? This idea that it wasn`t just a terrible situation that was born of bureaucratic pathology and poor leadership or whatever it was, right? That it was a breach in some way. Then Clinton said that yesterday. There was no finding a breach of duty. DOMENECH: Let me just say the one thing this does cut against when it comes to the competency side of things is what we`ve seen when it comes to the questions about security. The security of her e-mails, the information that was going around, that was being passed around, is going to remain an issue. It`s going to be brought up again and again. It`s going to be something that is asked of her on the debate stage. (CROSSTALK) DOMENECH: And not just that change. WELCH: I`m sorry to interrupt. She did say to the Egyptian prime minister on September 12th the video had nothing to do with this attack. Two days later she told a different story -- HAYES: Let me say this. There were seven stories by my count of what -- of how we ended up bombing the Doctors Without Borders facility in Kunduz, right? I, A, would like to see oversight hearings of that bombing because I think that was a terrible thing that happened. But I`m not convinced that was people lying. I think, most likely, that story changed because they didn`t know what the hell they did, right? And that to me is the other thing, is that -- (CROSSTALK) HAYES: Right, exactly. But in this case it has been. And that know is the thing that came out yesterday. The assumption driving all of this is bad faith, right? That there is bad faith somewhere if you look hard enough. And to me what came across in 11 hours yesterday was that they have not found bad faith. Ben Domenech and Matt Welch, I take the last word. It`s my -- thank you for coming. Coming up, time for the drastic measures in the Bush campaign. What the sweeping cuts mean for Jeb and any future candidates. Plus, Ben Carson on a tour for his latest book and as a public service to you, dear viewer, we took the responsibility of asking someone else to read it. Our first ever candidate book report. And later, revisit the 2014 Ebola panic. Remember the nurse quarantined by Chris Christie against her will? Well, now, she`s suing. She joins me, ahead. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: Today, we learned the identity of the first U.S. soldier killed in military action against ISIS. During a special operations raid in northern Iraq yesterday by U.S. and Kurdish commandos, Master Sergeant Joshua Wheeler was shot and killed by ISIS fighters. Defense officials say 39-year-old elite commando, a father of four, charged into the heat of battle during that mission that rescued 70 hostages who faced, quote, "imminent mass execution." The death of Wheeler has raised a lot of questions as the stated U.S. mission in Iraq is to "train and advise local forces against is," not engage in combat. Today, Defense Secretary Ash Carter admitted this was in fact combat. Citing the intelligence they gained from the raid, saying there would be more of this sort of thing. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) ASH CARTER, DEFENSE SECRETARY: They will be in harm`s way. There`s no question about it. And I don`t want anybody to be under any illusions about that. But this was an opportunity in which the capabilities that we uniquely possess could have a material effect. It was the risk associated with that there was. But again, all I can say is from the reports I`ve received I`m immensely proud of this young man. (END VIDEO CLIP) (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: Well, it`s another tough day for the Jeb Bush campaign. As first reported by Bloomberg and confirmed by NBC News, Bush`s campaign is removing some senior staff from the payroll parting ways with some consultants and downsizing its Miami headquarters to save more than $1 million per month and cut payroll by 40 percent. Some senior level staff and consultants will now work as volunteers for Bush without pay, while many junior-level consultants are being let go. At a campaign appearance at Regent University today, Bush tried to put a positive spin on the news. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JEB BUSH (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This means lean and mean and it means that I have the ability to adapt. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. BUSH: And the circumstances when we started the election were different. I have not met a person that thought Donald Trump would be the front-running candidate at this point. God bless him for his success in that regard. We`ll see how long that lasts. But you have to adapt. And you know, my adapting means -- I`m all in in the early primary states including Virginia. Every dollar we can save in overhead is a dollar that goes on television, goes on radio, goes on media, goes on voter outreach. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: We should note other candidates have gone through dire straits before and gone on to win their party nomination including both John McCain, who dismissed dozens of his staff in 2008, and John Kerry, who had to mortgage his house to loan his campaign more than $6 million in the 2004 cycle. But this is still a pretty dire sign for Bush, whose performance as a candidate and stagnant poll numbers seem to have scared the big donors who were supposed to allow him to run a big money shock and awe campaign straight to the nomination. This weekend, Bush is expected to be joined by his father and brother at a gathering of donors in Houston, where he will try to calm donor concern. Meanwhile, a new poll in Iowa shows Bush all the way down in a tie for fifth place. The candidate in first place for once is not Donald Trump but Ben Carson, whose support stands at 28 percent. Carson is surging, up ten points in Iowa since this poll was taken back in August. It`s the second Iowa poll in as many days to show Carson leading trump in Iowa. And his rise comes despite his decision to go on a book tour and to only visit Iowa once since he appeared at the Iowa state fair on August 16th. By contrast, Trump has visited Iowa five times since he appeared at the state fair. But his support has fallen since August. At a rally he disputed the finding. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I love Iowa, and I honestly think those polls are wrong. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: To get a sense of what a candidate like Jeb Bush is up against, take a look at what Iowa Republicans told pollsters they like about Carson -- 42 percent like that he has no experience in foreign policy, 73 percent of him approves of him having suggested a Muslim shouldn`t be president, 77 percent like his suggestion that gun control helped Hitler accomplish his goals. And 81 percent approve his claim that Obamacare is the worst thing to happen in America since slavery. Joining me now, MSNBC contributor Josh Barro, correspondent for "The Upshot" at "The New York Times." So, here`s my takeaway from the Bush thing. I think what we`re seeing right now is a fascinating unintended consequence of Citizens United and the role of big money, which is donor panic. It`s like a bank run or it`s like when hot money flees a developing economy that got a lot of foreign investment, which is that big money isn`t necessarily like long term or smart or stay the course, right? Big donors get panicky in the same way that like any dudes playing the stock market or sitting at a craps table does. JOSH BARRO, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: I think that`s true except I don`t think it`s a consequence of Citizens United. Because remember, he raised all this money for his super PAC before he got in the race. The thing they need in order to pay these staffers is current dollars -- HAYES: This is all hard money. You`re right. BARRO: And they have to raise $2,700 at the time they -- at a time they raise it from merely rich people, not from super rich oligarchs who can also write a $2,700 check if they want. But that`s -- those are the people that are panicking. But I don`t think it`s about Citizens United. I think it`s about Jeb having this sort of unique campaign where the argument for Jeb was that Jeb was inevitable. He was the guy who was going to win it. Therefore, you were supposed to give him that money. It`s hard for me to imagine a passionate Jeb supporter who gets an e-mail being like give us money for Jeb and they get out their credit card and they make the $100 donation. HAYES: Right. BARRO: The sort of people who are fueling Bernie Sanders and Ben Carson. So, once Jeb becomes not inevitable, it`s hard to understand why people write checks to him. So I think it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. But it actually shows how Citizens United isn`t as important as a lot of opponents of Citizens United make it out to be because the fact -- HAYES: At least not yet. BARRO: Right. The fact that Jeb bush has some very wealthy friends can`t allow him to -- HAYES: Right. Hard money still, I think we`re seeing the assertion of the importance of hard money, right? Which is the campaign you actually run. BARRO: And this is what did in Scott Walker. Scott Walker also had money in a super PAC. They`re giving people a lot of the money that got in -- HAYES: Because they never got to the point where they`re like, go up big on the air with the super PAC money. BARRO: Yes, and, Scott Walker couldn`t raise hard dollars because part of the point with Scott Walker was that Scott Walker could win this thing. Once it became clear that Scott Walker was not going to win this thing, the money dried up. HAYES: There`s an interesting lesson that Ted Cruz who I think is actually quite well positioned in all of this, a lesson he drew that he talked about. Take a listen. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: One of the things we did before we launched the campaign is we studied failed presidential campaigns. And one of the areas they get killed is burn rates. People hemorrhage cash. We focused very much on being lean early on, not spending money early on, saving our resources. We`re now deploying them. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: So, this I think is one of the lessons, right, is don`t build a big organization too early. Don`t -- you know, this idea of like go into these states and build out your organization. The people that have been rewarded are the people with quite small organizations. BARRO: Yes. Except if you`re going to go with a lean strategy you have to have a workable lean strategy. Surprisingly, Donald Trump is one of the people with a lean strategy. He`s very flashy. But his burn rate is not very high -- HAYES: No, he`s barely spending any money. BARRO: Right. But that`s because Donald Trump can just get all the free media he wants. And Ted Cruz has a version of that, there are people who are really into Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz gets into a lot of fights. People have strong opinions about him. I don`t know what a strategy like that would have looked like for Jeb Bush. I mean, how would Jeb Bush have drawn attention to himself and made clear that he was the inevitable candidate without having the big organization? In fact, part of the argument for him was that he hired all the smart operatives. He had all these early hires. People are talking about how impressive they were and they were hiring the best people. That costs money. It necessarily involves having a high burn rate. HAYES: Josh Barro, thank you. BARRO: Thank you. HAYES: Still ahead, it`s being called the most dangerous storm in history. The latest on Hurricane Patricia is next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: At this hour, Patricia, the most powerful hurricane ever measured in the western hemisphere, just made landfall on Mexico`s Pacific coast. The storm quickly morphed into a category 5 hurricane as maximum sustained winds increased from 85 miles per hour yesterday to nearing 200 miles per hour today. The fact is one writer for Slate put it, "Patricia is now very close to the theoretical maximum strength for a tropical cyclone on planet Earth." The storm is headed for the Mexican cities of Manzanillo and Puerto Vallarta and official residents and tourists are doing everything they can to prepare. This is a message that was posted on Instagram earlier from a resort in Puerto Vallarta warning people to go home. It reads in part, "local authorities have issued a statement strongly recommending our guests to leave the destination and head back to their place of origin for your well-being and safety." Or as the director of Mexico`s national water commission put it, "the risk to people`s physical safety and to their lives is very high." Joining me now, NBC News meteorologist Bill Karins. And Bill, just how bad is this storm? BILL KARINS, NBC NEW METEOROLOGIST: It`s bad enough that some of the small coastal towns, the little fishing villages, will probably be unrecognizable right where the eye made landfall. That just happened as you mentioned a little while ago. Let me show you, when we woke up this morning, I mean, this storm grew and intensified so fast it caught us all off guard including the people that live in these areas. It jumped up to one of the strongest storms we`ve ever recorded on our planet. It will rank probably as number three as the all-time strongest ever recorded. So it made landfall. The one good thing that happened, the four hours before landfall is began to fall apart a little bit. As fast as it wound up it began to come down. So, it made landfall at 165 miles per hour. That is still amazing. It`s not the 200, it`s not the strongest ever on our planet to make landfall, that record goes to Haiyan in the Philippines at 190-mile-per- hour winds. But this is still a very destructive storm. It made landfall stronger than Katrina and a little above what Andrew did there in South Florida. The one piece of good news, not for the fishing villages, but for the big cities, Puerto Vallarta, 200,000 people, Manzanillo about 100,000 people, the worst of those winds have avoided those cities. So, that`s good for them. So, where do we take it from here? We still have major destruction taking place on the map as the storm is now inland. It is now heading up into mountainous terrain. It is going to quickly fall apart. It`s already down to 160- mile-per-hour winds. It will fall to probably about 75 or less by the time you wake up tomorrow morning. As it`s over high mountains here that will tear the storm apart. And notice how far away it is in Puerto Vallarta. We were thinking they could get a direct hit from this and the city could be devastated, the tourist industry there. All the people from there evacuated over to Guadalajara today on buses. Hopefully no one got trapped on the highway because that`s the worst of where the storm is going to be. And as far as if you had to pick one little town on the coastline that went through the eye that`s probably not going to look the same as this satellite image, it`s perula, only about 661 people live there. You can see how they`re right on the water. This is one of the spots where the worst storm surge went inland, possibly upwards of 20 feet. On top of that, winds that were 160 miles per hour. So this is one of those small little towns when we get a look at it probably in two or three days won`t even be recognizable. The other story, Chris, we had to deal with, some of the moisture from this storm is going to get drawn up into Texas. We already had bad flooding there now (inaudible). And in the days ahead some of that moisture from Patricia will come up toward the Texas coast. So, the bottom line is that a horrendous storm, one of the strongest on our planet, has made landfall. But if I had to pick one spot on the map that is mostly sparsely unpopulated, it came inland there. For those people that lived in those areas that`s of little consequence to them. But it could have been a lot worse if it hit one of those big cities. HAYES: That is really, really clarifying, Bill. Thank you for that. It looks like Puerto Vallarta`s escaping the worst of what we thought might be possible, say, six, eight hours ago. Bill Karins, thank you very much. All right, up next, our inaugural candidate book report where we read candidate books so you don`t have to. First up, Dr. Ben Carson. You`re going to want to stick around for that one. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DR. BEN CARSON, 2016 REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The book is about our constitution. Everybody knows we have a constitution, but not everybody knows what`s in the constitution and what`s behind it. I`ve been talking about the constitution for years. But now it`s formalized. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Ben Carson may be leading the polls in Iowa, but he hasn`t even been there this week. Instead, he`s been in Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Kansas selling and signing his brand new book "A More Perfect Union." He`s also been talking about 2016 on his book tour, which flirts with violating federal laws banning corporations like publishers from contributing directly to a political campaign. Now, Carson`s new book is just the latest in a pile of books written by the current crop of presidential candidates. And while we here at "All In" really want to know what those books say, we also really don`t want to read them. So we asked Jeb Lund, columnist at The Guardian and Rolling Stone, to read them instead. And he started with "A More Perfect Union" by Ben Carson in the inaugural All In Presents: A Candidate Book Report. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JEB LUND, COLUMNIST: "I am encouraged that you have taken the time to read this book. As long as readers like you seek to understand and defend the constitution, America has a chance of maintaining her greatness." Boy, this book is really bad. "In my spare time, I love to play pool. I find it relaxing and challenging after a long and stressful day. And I enjoy playing it with my wife, who has become a formidable opponent. Whenever I am playing at a location away from home or playing a new challenger at home, the game begins with a statement of the house rules. There are rules about these rules. They must be mutually agreed upon before the game starts. They cannot be changed mid-game and outsiders have no right to change them. The first article of the constitution establishes the rules for the branch of our government that writes our laws, without these guidelines the functioning of government would be confusing and dangerous because the most powerful factions would be able to force their will upon the people." The perverse thing about doing a book report about this book is that it is itself a book report on the constitution. Carson really just goes through the history of the constitution, how it was written, what he thinks it means, and then he starts going article by article and amendment by amendment through it. So there`s really not a whole lot here that Carson has to say. In fact, his contributions to the historiography of the constitution end by page 95. In fact, it gets worse because on page 197 the constitution itself starts, which makes you wonder why you didn`t just skip to page 197 to begin with. "The PC police do not care that people disagree with them as long as those people remain silent. But if someone openly disagrees with them they demonize that person with ridicule and infantile name calling." To borrow something a friend of mine once said years ago, because this is a cable television program and families are watching I can`t use the language to describe this book that it so richly deserves. But "A More Perfect Union" is a poopy, poopy book. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Joining me now is Jeb Lund, columnist at The Guardian and Rolling Stone. Jeb, thank you very much for signing up for this very difficult duty. LUND: Well, thank you very much for assigning it to me. It was my privilege to discover more about the founding of our nation. HAYES: Wwell, so I want to be clear here. As we enter -- we`re going to do a series of these. But, lest anyone think that we are picking unfairly on Ben Carson, almost all books by politicians are terrible, almost all campaign or candidate books are terrible, as literature, as reading experiences, right? LUND: Yeah. I mean, the best way to think of them, is sort of like I think a memory exercise for the candidate before he or she goes out on the stump. I mean, they`re just sort of taking their base points and then they`re adding the numbers that they`re going to want to quote frequently from here until the election and the anecdotes and sort of the names of the people affected by policies that they`re going to want to refer back to. So it`s really just sort of chapter by chapter is this speech, this is going to be health care policy. This is going to be defense policy, and you know, it`s a crib sheet that also helps them make money. HAYES: Yeah. And in this case Ben Carson has been churning out books and selling books very successfully. I was curious if you felt like you gleaned any insight into the appeal of Ben Carson, who I have to say his biography is massively impressive and I understand the appeal of that. But just his persona I have a hard time understanding what in it, in his persona people find appealing. Did you get anything out of the book in that respect? LUND: Well, what I really took away from the book is something very similar to what you see on the stump where you know, he has that kind of like half-lidded and blissed-out Dr. Bunsen from the Muppets sort of look. And he`s telling you that Obamacare is slavery and gun control is Hitler but everything is fine. You know, and this book talks about, you know, we have activist judges and we are always one step away from tyranny here in the United States but if you just look at this foundational document and read it, and you don`t have to do anything, you don`t have to do serious study about it, you just read it or listen to him explaining it to you, and everything`s going to be fine. And I think has reassuring for people. And it`s the sunny disposition of Ronald Reagan almost. HAYES: Yeah, that is a well-said way of talking about his appeal because he manages to combine substantive rhetoric that is incredibly extremist or incredibly polemical with a disposition and tone that is so the opposite of it. LUND: Yeah. And it`s sort of funny. When you read the book, I mean, his history is kind of -- it`s so optimistic that it doesn`t actually accord with what happened. So, you get to points like on page 3 -- it`s page 3. Where he`s talking about the constitution is so good at establishing a separation of the powers and checks and balances, so we don`t have any tyranny. And then he segues into a quote from Andrew Jackson, a man who ignored the Supreme Court and prosecuted a genocide. And it`s upbeat. It`s about like what a great thing this is. Everything`s all right. HAYES; I think who do we have next up for you in this series? LUND: We`re going to go with Mike Huckabee`s large book. So I`m very psyched about that. I want to learn about being armed when I`m dining. HAYES: I am -- the one I was just emailing with a friend about "Art of the Deal," where he was trying to make some bet with me in which the loser had to read "art of the deal." Is there a campaign book you`re most excited to read? LUND: I confess that I`m actually really excited for Donald Trump`s. I feel like -- I mean, if he`s that good off the cuff, he`s got to have some -- just some really sort of next level analogies and complaints when he actually sits down and has a chance to help him edit it. HAYES: Hopefully a young intern like the young intern who tweeted out the Monsanto tweet, who is now by the way being thrown under the bus. All right, I am very excited that we are doing this. I think it`s a tremendous public service that you are engaged in. And I thank you for signing up for this duty. Cannot wait to see the next report. Jeb lund, thanks so much, man. LUND: Thank you. It`s my honor. HAYES: All right. Still ahead, the nurse put in quarantine against her will in the height of the Ebola panic is now suing Chris Christie. My interview with Kaci Hickox is ahead. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MITT ROMNEY, FRM. GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS: I know you don`t like the plan that we had. I don`t like the Obama plan. Our bill was 70 pages, his bill is 2,700 pages. We consider it very different than Obamacare. It`s bad law. It`s bad constitution law. It`s bad medicine. But one thin I can tell you, Obamacare is out. (END VIDEO CILP) HAYES: Remember all that? Throughout the 2012 campaign, Mitt Romney went to great lengths to explain how Romneycare, the health care system he implemented in Massachusetts was not Obamacare. But today, Romney seemed to finally admit that, well, that`s not true and that also Obamacare is working. In a Boston Globe obituary for Staples founder Tom Stemberg, Romney credits Stemberg with persuading him to pursue healthcare reform as governor. "Without Tom pushing it, I don`t think we would have had Romneycare. Without Romneycare, I don`t think we would have had Obamacare. So without Tom a lot of people wouldn`t have health insurance." This afternoon Romney tried to walk that back writing on Facebook "I oppose Obamacare and believe it has failed." We should note according to a census report last month the number of uninsured Americans dropped from nearly 42 million to 33 million in the first full year Obamacare was in effect. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The stakes of this panel couldn`t be any higher. The number of Ebola cases in western Africa is doubling about every three weeks. The math still favors the virus. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Because of the events of the past week they are now dealing with at least 50 health care workers who may potentially have been exposed. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: year ago today, America`s Ebola panic was sent into overdrive when the first case of the deadly virus was diagnosed right here in New York, the nation`s largest city. Dr. Craig Spencer, who`d been treating Ebola patients in West Africa as a volunteer with Doctors Without Borders, reported feeling sick a couple days after returning home. And word of a possible case in The Big Apple sent the media, ourselves included, into Ebola outbreak death watch, tracking the ambulance carrying Dr. Spencer down the FDR drive to a hospital downtown, retracing his steps around the city on a day before his symptoms set in, even doing an entire live show from the sidewalk outside Bellevue Hospital, where Spencer was being treated in isolation. Weeks earlier, the first case of Ebola had been diagnosed in the U.S, Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian national, visiting family in Dallas, who was initially sent home from the hospital with antibiotics and a recommendation to take Tylenol. After he is rushed back to the emergency room, Duncan ultimately succumbed to the virus to date, the only death from Ebola in the U.S. When two of the nurses caring for him became infected, there was outright panic after one of them managed to get on a plane to Ohio and all eyes were glued to the screen when she made it back to Texas, where emergency health workers boarded her onto a plane bound for a special facility in Atlanta. There was special concern for the other nurse`s dog, Bentley, who made it through his 21-day quarantine without developing symptoms. Amid all the hysteria and calls for a travel ban on passengers coming from West Africa, President Obama actually appointed an Ebola czar, political veteran Ron Klain, to oversee the government`s response, not that anyone was satisfied. (BEIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDETIFIED FEMALE; With Ebola scares popping up across the country and concern growing over the risk of a deadly outbreak, the White House is addressing the crisis by putting a political operative in charge of life and death decision making. UNIDENITFIED MALE: President Obama, meanwhile, appoints an Ebola czar who`s supposed to help solve that crisis. he only problem -- he has nothing to do with health care, he`s a political hack. Is he the right person for the job? Ann Coulter is here to tell us. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Then there was Kaci Hickox, the nurse who`d been volunteering with Ebola patients in Sierra Leone who was put under mandatory quarantine by New Jersey governor Chris Christie after returning to the country at Newark Airport. A year after her ordeal, she is now suing Christie for violating her civil rights. And Kaci Hickox joins me next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Looks like you`re going to have to defend this in court. CHRIS CHRISTIE, GOVERNOR OF NEW JERSEY: Well, whatever. I`ve been sued lots of times before. Get in line. I`m happy to take it on. She was inside the hospital in a climate controlled area with access to her cell phone, access to the internet and takeout food from the best restaurants in Newark. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Nurse Kaci Hickox is suing Chris Christie for quarantining her upon her return from Sierra Leone last year and she joins me now. Can you -- before we get into lawsuit, just take me back to a year ago about what it was like to get off that plane having just been giving medical care to very sick people, putting yourself in harm`s way by doing it, to find yourself the focal point of a national freakout. KACI HICKOX, NURSE: I tell you, it was very surprising. I remember being in Sierra Leone and my mom had sent me an email saying are you nervous about coming back? And I told her no, you know, I`ve worked in public health for years and in the U.S. we know about this disease, we know how to handle these things. So I was completely shocked and taken aback. And I think once I got into the tent all of that shock faded away and changed to something much more scary. HAYES: You were shepherded from the airport against your will into a tent outside a hospital. You were ultimately released from that tent. You were then sent back to Maine where you were put under a kind of house quarantine that you did not abide by because you said it was not medically sound which I think was later proven to be true. What is the lawsuit against Governor Christie? HICKOX: So it is actually a lawsuit against Governor Christie and other officials in New Jersey who chose to quarantine and ultimately isolate me with no medical, scientific, public health or legal grounds. And we hope, you know, the whole goal of this lawsuit, it`s not about me, it`s about the fact that some of these quarantine policies are still in place in states in the U.S. and we have to hold politicians accountable for these decisions. You cannot forcibly incarcerate someone if it`s not based on legal grounds. HAYES: I was just going back through the coverage. We just played some of that coverage from a year ago. It feels very distant now. In the midst of it it felt like we were watching -- it was like a real-life version of Walking Dead or something, that the end of the world was coming. Have we learned anything? HICKOX: You know, I hope so. I think when we look back one of the things that I read again this week was the Act Up campaign in New York. And the march that they did from Bellevue Hospital to Governor Cuomo`s office. And you know, learning from the HIV outbreak in the early `80s, it took a while for the public to get over the fear and understand the disease, and it took medical experts and doctors and nurses and patients really standing up and fighting for rights and fighting against discrimination, which is what these kind of quarantine decisions based on fear is. And I think there were definitely states that took leadership positions, there were governors and department of health officials who stood up against the fear. And they did the right thing. Unfortunately, there are just those outliers like New Jersey and New York and Maine. HAYES: How has your life changed? My understanding is you were living in Maine, you`ve moved to Oregon. What has this past year been like for you? HICKOX: Oh, I mean, it`s been a whirlwind of a year. We -- you probably heard that my partner`s school banned him from attending campus while I was under quarantine. So he ended up having to drop out of nursing school. I was looking for work in the Maine area to try to stay in Maine, but there are just not a lot of public health jobs, unfortunately, because Governor LePage has cut most of the public health budget. So it wasn`t an option for us to stay. And then we faced another cross-country move within about eight months of originally moving to Maine. So it`s been crazy, but we have been here in Oregon for about seven months, and it`s beautiful and life is getting back to normal, and maybe a little less normal over the next few months during this lawsuit, but we really felt like it was important that we hold leaders accountable so that health care workers are protected in the future. HAYES: All right, a resoundingly healthy and upbeat Kaci Hickox. Thank you very much. HICKOX: Thank you. HAYES: And that is All In for this evening. The Rachel Maddow Show starts right now with, and this is very, very exciting, her exclusive interview with presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, her first since yesterday`s marathon Benghazi hearing. You do not want to miss it. i have seen it live while it was happening in the building. And believe me, it`s fantastic. Everyone on the fourth floor, Rachel, we were all watching it live. It was really great. I`m very excited for folks to see this. THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. END