Special: On the Ground for Iran Talks, Upcoming 2016 Presidential Announcements, The Schumer-Durbin Derby & The Other "Pete Williams"

ANNOUNCER: This is the Washington Week Webcast Extra.

MS. IFILL: Hello and welcome. I’m Gwen Ifill. We had so much to talk about on the regular broadcast that we just had to stick around a little longer.

Joining me, John Harwood of CNBC, Pete Williams of NBC News, Matea Gold of The Washington Post and Indira Lakshmanan of Bloomberg News. Indira came the longest and the farthest to reach the table, all the way from Switzerland, so she gets the first question.

We’ve been keeping up so much on how this happened, but there had to be things that happened behind the scene – little tick-tock – we call it tick-tock in the biz – (laughter) – that made you think, OK, maybe this is actually going to happen, or maybe it’s never going to happen.

MS. LAKSHMANAN: Oh, there were so many moments like that. Part of that was because we as journalists were so cut off from the information that was going on inside the room that we were reading every single tea leaf that we could get our hands on. But there were so many strange moments, because remember, this is six nations, six powers – the U.N. Security Council plus Germany – negotiating –

MS. IFILL: Which we forget.

MS. LAKSHMANAN: – yes – negotiating with Iran. So all those other foreign ministers had to show up as well.

And there were so many funny moments when, like, Sergey Lavrov, who definitely goes to the beat of his own drummer, the Russian foreign minister, he said, you know, I am not going to come in unless there is a chance of a deal. So he finally flies from Latin America all the way to Geneva and we all think, oh my gosh, it means we’re going to have a deal. And he stays for less than 18 hours, flies away in a huff because he has to meet the foreign minister of Vanuatu. (Laughter.) And then the next – we all think, oh my gosh, that means we’re not going to have a deal. And then the very next day he flies back again; we think, OK, yeah, yeah, we’re going to have a deal. And then less than eight hours later he’s gone again.

The French foreign minister did the same thing – flew in and out, in and out. The British foreign minister did the same thing. And everyone was trying to –

MS. IFILL: While John Kerry stayed the whole time.

MS. LAKSHMANAN: John Kerry stayed the whole time. The Iranian foreign minister stayed the whole time. They were the ones who were really there every single night getting less than an hour of sleep.

MS. IFILL: I thought it was interesting that when the announcement happened they didn’t send out John Kerry and Javad Zarif, they sent out the –

MS. LAKSHMANAN: OK, they – there’s a reason for that.

MS. IFILL: Yeah?

MS. LAKSHMANAN: They sent out the EU high representative for foreign policy –

MS. IFILL: Right.

MS. LAKSHMANAN: – who’s now Frederica Mogherini. And the reason they do that is because, the way that this whole process was designed, the EU was meant to be the convener of these six nations. So it’s not meant to be a U.S.-led thing; it’s meant to be an international thing. So she gives the imprimatur of international leadership.

But the other thing that, you know, I think is striking is how Kerry’s sort of delivery and talking points and fact sheet were different from Javad Zarif’s. Each of them had to talk to their own home audience and say, I won; no, no, no, no, no, I won.

MS. IFILL: In fact, that’s the whole point of negotiating, is to be able to go home and say I won, no matter what happened on the piece of paper, and then the right begins.

MS. LAKSHMANAN: That’s right.

MS. IFILL: Thanks a lot.

MS. LAKSHMANAN: Oh, it was great.

MS. IFILL: I want to turn to Matea now, because we are curious about why we’re hearing now that Rand Paul is going to announce in April. We’re hearing that Hillary Clinton has rented office space and is going to announce in April. Why are we now beginning to see candidates finally confirming what we already knew this month?

MS. GOLD: All right. Shocking, there are candidates for 2016!

MS. IFILL: Yeah.

MS. GOLD: We have one official candidate, Senator Cruz, who was the first to jump in. One of the reasons particularly that the sitting senators are announcing now is that they don’t have the same kind of leeway to raise money for super PACs as the governors. So if you are a federal officeholder or you are a federal candidate, there’s sort of a porous wall that goes up between you and a super PAC that will divide with your efforts.

MS. IFILL: So, Senator Rubio, Senator Cruz and Senator Paul.

MS. GOLD: And Senator Paul. As you notice, they’re all kind of in quick succession jumping in there. And so for Governor Bush and for Perry and for others, there’s really not a lot of incentive to jump in too early if you’re trying to engage a lot with your super PAC and raise money for it. Once you’re an official candidate, you can no longer ask for more than a $5,000 donation to that super PAC which, as we know, $5,000 is peanuts for a super PAC. So –

MS. IFILL: Is there a financial reason for Hillary Clinton to time her announcement?

MS. GOLD: Well, I think that rationale’s a little different. There is so much pressure after sort of the stumbles of the last few months – the questions about email, the question about the foundation donors. People want to see her have a political infrastructure up and running. And she really needs to get in there, set something up and really be in a position to respond.

MS. IFILL: John, let’s talk a little bit more about political infrastructure, because last week around the table we were surprised that day to discover that Harry Reid was going to step down as – well, just quit the Senate in a couple of years. But it didn’t take – it’s going to be 19 months, but it didn’t take much long for a full fight to break out about who would succeed him as Democratic leader in the Senate. I was really actually a little surprised at that, because he seemed to make it clear that day that his choice was Chuck Schumer.

MR. HARWOOD: Well, that’s right, and Chuck Schumer does have the commanding position to be the leader. But what you then had happen was Dick Durbin, who is the number two to Harry Reid, indicated through his aides that Schumer had committed to him to support him for the number two job, and Schumer stood up and said, I didn’t promise that. (Laughter.)

And the reason that Chuck Schumer didn’t want to be seen as promising that is, first of all, this leadership election’s not going to take place for, as you indicated, another year and a half. Chuck Schumer is still vulnerable to a challenge, especially from one of the women in the increasingly influential bloc of Democratic women. Patty Murray – what if she stood up and said, I want to challenge Schumer?

So she’s not – Chuck Schumer’s trying to signal to Patty Murray, I haven’t promised Dick Durbin that he’s going to be the number two. So you’re going to have to see how that shakes out. But I was out in Nevada –

MS. IFILL: I was going to ask you about that. You went out to talk to Harry Reid.

MR. HARWOOD: I went out to talk to Harry Reid and I asked him about it. And he said, you know what? These guys need to relax, sit down, be calm. There’s only one opening, that’s for my job – which I think might have been a signal that, even though he’s not going to take sides, he regards Dick Durbin as somebody who as the right to hold that job. But let’s don’t fight this out now; let’s put this off for another day.

MS. IFILL: Put it off. How does Harry Reid seem to you?

MR. HARWOOD: Harry Reid seemed very content. He tried a lame April Fools’ joke – (laughter) – said, you know what, I haven’t told my staff this, but I’ve gotten so much good press since I announced my retirement I’m going to run again. (Laughter.) And I said – I said, nice. He says, what do you mean, nice? I’m going to run again, really. I said, April Fools’. (Laughter.)

MS. GOLD: He didn’t fool you for a second?

MS. IFILL: He didn’t fool you? He would have fooled me. Weirder things have happened.

MR. HARWOOD: No, no. One of the – one of the – one of the media websites had a headline: “Harry Reid is Really Bad at April Fools’.” (Laughter.)

MS. IFILL: Well, he’s not any worse than the president, trying to imitate Frank Underwood. That was – ugh – you have to go look that one up.

I want to go to Pete for the ending, because he has the weirdest story of the week. And we talked in the regular broadcast about the indictment that was brought against Senator Robert Menendez. Interesting thing, of course, is the last senator indicted for corruption in New Jersey turned out to be –

MR. WILLIAMS: For bribery was –

MS. IFILL: For bribery.

MR. WILLIAMS: – Harrison Arlington Williams, Jr., nicknamed Pete Williams. (Laughter.)

When I was a summer intern in the Senate for Gale W. McGee, a Democrat from Wyoming –

MS. IFILL: There he is.

MR. WILLIAMS: Oh. There is Senator Pete Williams. It’s a different Pete Williams. (Laughs, laughter.) So my boss said, hey, wouldn’t it be funny if Pete Williams met Pete Williams? So I went into his office and shook hands with him.

Now we fade to black. We come back up to the Menendez thing, and it gets started because somebody claims to a conservative blog that there was some shenanigans going on in these trips to the Dominican Republic. That turned out to be wrong, but the tipster was Pete Williams. (Laughter.) And when I started to report the story and called the FBI, they said, well, what are you asking us for? You’re the one behind all this. (Laughter.)

MS. IFILL: And here we thought you had a unique name.

MR. HARWOOD: Pete, what I – what I want to know is, has anybody ever mistaken you for a convicted felon?

MR. WILLIAMS: (Laughs.)

MS. IFILL: And if so, are you willing to tell us that right now?

MR. WILLIAMS: Probably some members of my family. (Laughter.)

MS. IFILL: (Laughs.) Thank you all very much. Stay online all week long for the latest developments on these and other stories from the best reporters in Washington, our panelists. And check out our new feature, #askGwen, where I answer some of the questions I bet you’ve been dying to ask. Be clean. (Laughter.) That’s, of course, at PBS.org/WashingtonWeek. And we’ll see you next time on the Washington Week Webcast Extra.