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Benghazi Committee Wrap-up
This is a preview from Friday morning’s The Daily Shot newsletter. Subscribe here.
Yesterday, Hillary Clinton testified before the House Select Committee on Benghazi. She began around 10 AM and testified for more than 11 hours. (Luckily for Clinton, she had prepared ahead of time by drinking the blood of a thousand innocents.) As the hearing began, Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy let everybody know that Clinton had already been sworn in behind closed doors (meaning that there would be no memorable low-angle photos of Clinton with her hand raised) and also that if anybody needed one, “we can take a break for any reason or no reason. If you or anyone alerts me, we can take a break for any reason or for no reason.”
After filling everyone in on his super-liberal break-taking policy, Gowdy dove right in, saying that this investigation was about four Americans who died in the 2012 embassy attack. “We owe them and each other the truth. The truth about why we were in Libya, the truth about what we were doing in Libya.” He added, “We’re gonna find the truth because there is no statute of limitations on the truth.” Then Gowdy undid his jacket and tore open his shirt to reveal a tattoo that said “TRUTH” in big black letters.
So what did they talk about for so long? It was kind of all over the place. Republicans on the committee threw questions at Clinton and she, well rehearsed, comfortable in formal settings (it’s interacting with humans in normal settings that always trips her up), and not bound by any moral requirement to be truthful, was able to parry them away.
Clinton had a response ready for the wide range of questions, from the security situation in Benghazi (“There was no credible or actionable threat known to our intelligence community at that time”), to her private email server (“I did not do the vast majority of my work from email”), to her communications with longtime associate Sidney Blumenthal (who Clinton claimed “was not my adviser”).
Republicans on the committee were looking for some new revelation to justify their investigation. Democrats were looking to demonstrate that their criticisms of the committee were accurate: that the point was to injure Clinton, not seek the truth. (A criticism bolstered a few weeks ago when Republican Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy publicly suggested just such a thing.) That view is also shared by a large majority of the public. A CNN/ORC poll released this week shows that 72 percent think that the committee is “Mostly using the investigation to gain political advantage.”
The general consensus seems to be, if you’re a Hillary fan, you thought she did great; if you’re a Gowdy fan, you thought he did great. (If you actually watched the whole damn thing, you didn’t think anything because you probably fell asleep.)
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Published in Foreign Policy, Military, Politics
Well I do think that the purpose of the committee is to injure Hillary Clinton, but I only think this because I assume that the TRUTH will be injurious to her, which is why she avoids it like a vampire avoids the blessed Sun.
Did you watch or are you just making this up?
I am done with this site.
Victory for Hillary.
If you are going to do something this big, with every eye on you, for 11 hours, you’d better have some bombshell waiting to make people think you are really onto something.
That never happened.
I’ve said this before – congressional committee hearings are never designed to be about the answers, but the never-ending speeches the congressman ask during the questions to make themselves look good.
I did a study of each word spoken during the Sotomayor confirmation hearings. The Senators out-spoke her 95,595 words to 49,176 words, 66% to 34%.
Trey Gowdy may have good intentions, but he won’t escape the criticism that the whole committee is there to vogue for the camera.
Jim Jordan dropped a bombshell when he showed the emails from Herself that she knew the attack had nothing to do with the video. From that it is obvious that she and the administration lied to us. That would disqualify any Republican candidate. But in the world of the Democrats, that puts her on par with her husband.
But we already knew this. It’s actually the only criticism I have of Hillary regarding Benghazi – that she was so quick to divert guilt away from middle-eastern Islamofascists and toward a Christian from California.
But we already knew this. I’ve been commenting on that for years.
I always knew she was lying too, but now there is proof in her own words.
Unfortunately, truth and justice don’t matter to progressives.
It anin’t over until the fat lady sings, and she didn’t yesterday.
That Republicans found the smoking gun and it won’t matter speaks volumes about modern society.
The only way this hurts Clinton is if Sanders and his friends in the media use this against her. The attack must come from the Left for the Left’s voters to care. They only trust Democrats.
Short of that, only a felony conviction for mishandling classified information could stop her. But I’d be amazed if charges were pressed, whatever the evidence against her.
If Sanders uses this, he runs the risk of HRC pulling her support of his campaign.
The Republicans on the committee botched this. If Jordan or anyone else really had a bombshell, the worst thing to do was stretch the hearings into an 11 hour snoozefest.
Nobody who isn’t already fiercely opposed to Clinton is paying attention to Benghazi anymore. If Republicans really wanted to get a point across to the undecided public, they should have limited it to 2-3 hours tops, focused only on the 1 or 2 most damning indictments they had, and not talked about anything else.
Instead, the hearings dragged on so endlessly that it was guaranteed the media would report the process and not the content.
After the first round of questioning, the thought occurred to me that the plan was to fatigue Ms. Clinton and save the hardest, most antagonizing question for the final round.
Apparently it was not the plan or she held up better than anticipated.
YouTube clips on Facebook, Mendel. They have options (not that I expect Republicans to pursue anything so obvious and simple).
Yes, but most people don’t have Benghazi on their radar and need a trigger or hook to even want to click on those YouTube videos. That hook would come from the media reacting to hearings that were actually newsworthy.
As much as we think the media always defends Hillary, they’ve been quite eager over the last few months to rake her over the coals for the e-mail server. If Republicans had actually drawn some blood, it might have generated interest outside of the Drudge and DailyKos circles.
But they didn’t, and yesterday will soon be forgotten by nearly everyone.
The White House has been relatively silent on this whole chapter. Is it possible that all the Sid Blumenthal chat yesterday was meant to annoy the Administration? Is the hearing rubbing the Admin’s nose in the fact that HRC is lacking in loyalty and willing to sacrifice the POTUS’s legacy and security contrary to his express directive that Mr. Blumenthal not be involved?
@Beowolf, #2: I don’t quite understand your complaint. TDS is intended to be humorous.
Hey, Fred. I like the “Daily Shot.” I am a regular reader. Keep it up.