Special: Is 2016 Ready for Hillary?, The Fight Against ISIS and Souring U.S. Relationship with Netanyahu

ANNOUNCER: This is the WASHINGTON WEEK Webcast Extra.

GWEN IFILL, "WASHINGTON WEEK" MODERATOR: Hello and welcome.

I’m Gwen Ifill and I’m joined around the table by Jeff Zeleny, senior Washington correspondent for ABC News, Nancy Youssef, senior national security correspondent for "The Daily Beast", Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for "The New York Times", and Dan Balz, chief correspondent for "The Washington Post."

Very impressive titles, everyone.

(LAUGHTER)

IFILL: Because we can’t get enough, and we know you can’t either, we want to dig in a little deeper on the 2006 contest, which is shaping to be doozy. Absent Mitt Romney, lonely Republican eyes are turning to Jeb Bush and Chris Christie, but also to Rand Paul, and Scott Walker and the clutch of other aspirants. They all assume their eventual opponent will be Hillary Clinton, who has been making some moves of her own, hasn’t she, Dan?

DAN BALZ, THE WASHINGTON POST: She has been. She’s been holed up in Chappaqua at their house there for much of this time, doing a lot of preparation. She’s put in together a staff. We know that. She’s made some key decisions on who’s going to staff the senior levels of her campaign. She’s doing briefings. She’s trying to figure out what her message is going to be -- which is perhaps the most important thing she has to do. And she’s trying to figure out how long she can wait before she actually has to go out and start campaigning.

IFILL: That’s interesting part, Jeff, which is this week, we’ve got this indication that she’s pushing it back, maybe understanding what we were saying about Mitt Romney during the broadcast, which is you’re never more popular than when you’re on the sidelines.

JEFF ZELENY, ABC NEWS: No question that’s definitely true with her. But I think we’re seeing a lot of trial balloons, sort of like, what would happen if I’ll wait until June or July?

A, I think a lot of people who she has brought on would be hungry by then because they need to get paid. These are real jobs. They’re like living -- I heard a story that one person fairly high up is, you know, like running out of people’s couches to stay on.

She actually needs to build a real organization. That’s why I think she’ll do something sooner rather than a later, if it’s an exploratory or something else.

She says that Democrats close to her say, you know, she doesn’t probably have a strong Democratic opponent, but the reality is she has about 12 opponents. And all of them will be training her attention on her. All the Republicans will be running against her, as a way to sort of build themselves up.

So, I think she and a lot of Democrats I talked to thinks she needs to have an organization in place more, and she is a little rusty as well. So, perhaps getting out there and acting like she’s fighting for it and actually like really fighting for it as opposed to waiting for it to come to you. I think it would serve her better, but we’ll see.

IFILL: Maybe, more Putin impressions.

What do you of the people, we know, or we have heard, who are going to work for her, what does that tell us? Including some Obama people, what does that tell us about what type of campaign she’s putting together this time?

BALZ: It’s a different operation than she’s got. She’s reached out beyond the inner circle. I think that one of the things we’re figuring out is that she realizes she needs somebody at the top of the organization. We all assume it’s going to be John Podesta, who will be leaving the White House sooner, rather than later.

That she needs somebody at the top of that organization who is in the sense up here, who she has great confidence in, who can talk to her directly, but also who can say to what is, you know, this massive friends of Clinton network, with a lot of people who think they either have or should have direct access to her, cool it. We’re going to make the decisions, don’t get in the way of it.

IFILL: Who says that to the former president?

(LAUGHTER)

ZELENY: Good question. I’m not sure if anyone.

I think people say it to him. I think John Podesta would be one. But I’m not sure if he’ll listen. That’s a big question in this and perhaps that’s why some reporters want her to announce sooner rather than a later, because we want to see what his role is going to be. He’s still defining his role. He was, you know, played an interesting role, often good, sometimes bad, in 2007. So, we’ll see.

IFILL: You know he’ll be all up in. It will be fun to watch.

Nancy, I want to talk to you about one of the issues, which would be waiting any new president, and that’s this -- the continuing building and strength of ISIL, ISIS, the Islamic State group, whatever you call them. What we saw this was action on two fronts. We saw they were beat back in the Kurdish region, Kobani in Syria, this week, which was good news for people who are trying to -- what’s the word -- defang ISIS.

But then, today, today, Friday that is, we hear that there was some progress made or at least attack launched in Kirkuk. And so, we wonder in Iraq, and so, we begin to wonder, are they getting stronger? Are they getting weaker?

NANCY YOUSSEF, THE DAILY BEAST: The truth is no one can say for sure. What we’ve heard is that there are 6,000 fighters that have been killed. We don’t know how many they’ve been able to bring back, foreign fighters to bring in. There maybe a relationship between what happened in Kobani and Kirkuk because one of the things you saw in Kobani was not just that the Kurdish forces were able to beat them back with the help of the U.S. and coalition airstrike, but that ISIS forces left and move back into Iraq.

So, were those forces then available to try to launch an attack on Kirkuk, which psychologically is very traumatic for the Kurds, it’s an oil-rich town, that would be key to any sort of Kurdish state. They killed the brigadier general up there, which is one of the highest ranking officers to be killed in this.

And so, this is a push-pull that’s been going on with this war the whole time, that the U.S. talks so often about it’s going to take three to five years to defeat them. We just heard that figure today from DOD, and it’s literally this little --

IFILL: Department of Defense for those who --

YOUSSEF: I’m sorry. Department of Defense, the Pentagon.

And at the same time, we’re starting to see ISIS even try to expand into places like Libya, where they launch an attack against the hotel in Tripoli. And you can see that they have aspirations beyond, we call them Islamic State, ISIS, for Iraq and Syria. But you can see this week that they also have eyes on North Africa, and perhaps beyond as we saw last week in Southeast Asia.

IFILL: Their handprints are all over Boko Haram, for instance.

YOUSSEF: Yes, they work with Boko Haram, it seems, because Boko Haram went from putting this grainy video to launching a media channel, much like ISIS media channel, al-Furqan. Their videos went from very poor quality to very sophisticated, with Arabic and English subtitles. And on Twitter, ISIS supporters kind of give them high-five for launching their new channels.

So, I think their best case scenario, Libya would be the capital of the North African wing, if you will. Libya would be the Syria of North Africa, and Nigeria would be the Syria of West Africa.

IFILL: Peter, you know, it’s interesting. Part of the conversation here has been Iran and Iran sanctions and negotiating a nuclear deal. What you seem to have steered up bad feelings among -- more than one of our allies. But one of the key one, which we’ve seen front and center in the last week or two has been Israel, and Benjamin Netanyahu, and kind of bad blood bursting out into the open.

PETER BAKER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Yes, you see this pattern again and again where they’re under President Obama, there’s been this blowup with Bibi Netanyahu, over something or another, and then both sides kind of tamp down the emotions say, well, maybe, it’s not as bad as all that. This time, the difference is --

IFILL: It gets worse.

BAKER: This time, the difference is nobody trying to tamp it down and the fact that it’s escalating it. This has gone on now for a number of days rather than trying to quiet it. They’re adding more fuel to fire. An administration official told my colleague Julie Davis that the ambassador to Washington from Israel cared more about Bibi Netanyahu’s political future than about the relationship with United States. It’s a pretty harsh thing to say.

Bibi Netanyahu today announced 450 more settlement units, in direct poke at President Obama. And it’s revealed or at least underscore what we’ve also known I suppose, just how bad the relationship between these two men are, coming in to a March 17th election in Israel.

IFILL: Well, that’s what I’m curious about. Is it that March 17th election that is making -- that is exacerbating what are already been kind of a tense relationship? It’s kind of like, whatever the heck, I got to get reelected, I got to deal with my domestic issues, and I’ll worry about the U.S. later?

BAKER: Yes. Two things going on, one is he does believe that Netanyahu -- he does believe that President Obama is going to throw Israel under the bus in effect with this Iran negotiations, if they come up with the deal, and he’s basically sort of circumventing the president to work with the Republican Congress. He’s sort of laying his bet down that they’re going to stop --

(CROSSTALK)

IFILL: -- he accepted John Boehner’s invitation to come speak before a joint session of Congress --

BAKER: Exactly, to sort of touch off his latest round of backbiting.

IFILL: Right.

BAKER: And then he’s convinced I think that the Obama people are trying to influence his reelection. There’s a former Obama campaign person who’s in Israel working, they pointed to that. They think some of things Obama --

(CROSSTALK)

IFILL: Haven’t there been former campaign people working in previous elections?

BAKER: Of course, there have.

But, you know, if you’re running for reelection and feeling tight, you see the hand of a foreign government in effect shaping things, you get a little suspicious about that.

IFILL: OK. Well, we’re going to see how that’s -- whether there’s tamping down to be done at least, maybe after March.

BAKER: Maybe after, yes.

IFILL: OK. Thank you all very much.

Stay online to read my take this week in which I held forth on why going to the movies has become a political act.

And we’ll see you next time on the WASHINGTON WEEK Webcast Extra.