CNN’s Wolf Blitzer interviewed President Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice during Thursday’s edition of The Situation Room and neglected to bring up the second anniversary of the tragic attack in Benghazi, Libya that left U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, foreign service officer Sean Smith and CIA contractors Tyrone Woods and Glenn Doherty dead. Instead, the nearly eight-and-a-half-minute interview discussed President Obama’s speech to the nation from Wednesday night on ISIS and reaction to Diane Foley speaking to CNN’s Anderson Cooper about how she believed that the United States did not do enough to save her son Jim before he was brutally murdered by ISIS.
Benghazi
By Connor Williams | August 6, 2014 | 5:35 PM EDT
In a discussion about Rand Paul’s presidential chances on MSNBC’s The Last Word, a panel featuring Josh Barro and Richard Wolffe managed to hit Republicans for being anti-immigrant while also accusing Paul and conservatives – not the Obama administration – of misleading on Benghazi. Paul has received media criticism for supposedly fleeing a dinner with Rep. Steve King when the Iowa Republican was approached by two so-called “Dreamers” regarding his opposition to the President’s DACA program. Paul says he got up from lunch to conduct a pre-arranged interview with reporters a few feet away.
The New York Times’s Barro, who recently caused a stir for suggesting on Twitter that socially conservative attitudes need to be ruthlessly “stamped out,” had unkind things to say about those who support more border security as well. He whined that “so much of the Republican base...is just very strongly anti-immigration.” He elaborated further on the subject: “And when Republicans talk about these immigration issues, they come off as sort of nasty.” In Barroland, it’s “nasty” to want the President to enforce the nation’s immigration laws, but perfectly civil to daydream about society blackballing social conservatives for their religious beliefs. [MP3 audio here; video below]
By Geoffrey Dickens | July 21, 2014 | 1:40 PM EDT
PBS’s Charlie Rose opened his 62 minute-long interview with Hillary Clinton, aired in two parts on Thursday and Friday’s Charlie Rose show, by reciting a Maya Angelou poem dedicated to the former Secretary of State. Almost an hour later Rose finally asked Clinton about the Benghazi scandal.
In the second part of the interview, aired at the end of Friday’s show, Rose waited until his last question, with just a little over 3 minutes of interview time left, to finally bring up Benghazi. Even then Rose sheepishly tip-toed up to the topic as he told Clinton that if he didn’t ask the question he was worried “a thousand people will write me.” Sadly, neither Rose or Clinton could even bring themselves to actually mention the names of the four victims (Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods, Glen Doherty) killed in the September 11, 2012 attacks. (video after the jump)
By Curtis Houck | June 18, 2014 | 6:46 PM EDT
On Tuesday night, CBS and NBC led their evening newscasts with the arrest of the supposed mastermind of the September 11, 2012 terrorist attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya while ABC reported it right after two short stories on devastating tornadoes in the Midwest.
To their credit, CBS and ABC made a serious attempt at bias-free reporting but NBC’s Nightly News fell short. On top of that, the peacock network continued their biased perspective this morning on the Today show. [See video below. MP3 audio here]
By Connor Williams | June 17, 2014 | 5:22 PM EDT
In a passionate interview with host Brooke Baldwin on the June 17 edition of CNN Newsroom, Patricia Smith – mother of slain U.S. diplomat Sean Smith – voiced her frustrations about the lack of answers she has received from the Obama administration regarding Benghazi.
Smith had one basic request for Hillary Clinton, a simple phone call [MP3 audio here; video below]:
By Tom Johnson | June 5, 2014 | 11:10 PM EDT
On Wednesday, Salon's Simon Maloy suggested that the Attkisson-Heritage relationship is a match made in conservative heaven given that Attkisson's Benghazi-related resignation from CBS was an "act of career martyrdom" which made her "a candidate for canonization by right-wing pundits and activists."
"Conservatives," Maloy snarked, "love [Attkisson] for her willingness to flog Obama scandals long after they’ve been debunked and/or ceased being relevant." He added that as it stands, "the Daily Signal will have to lean heavily on whatever gravitas Attkisson provides because the rest of the site is just awful."
By Kyle Drennen | June 5, 2014 | 12:04 PM EDT
During a fawning segment on Thursday's NBC Today promoting Hillary Clinton's People magazine interview, co-host Savannah Guthrie parroted the former Secretary of State's spin on the 2012 terrorist attack in Libya: "On Benghazi, Clinton said the chance to testify was the most important thing to her, despite a fall and concussion that's brought some Republican hard knocks on her health." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
Guthrie touted Clinton's thinly-veiled attempt to question the health of Republican Congressman Paul Ryan: "Clinton told People that 2012 GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan told her he had suffered three concussions, one serious." Guthrie then noted: "Team Clinton has set up a rapid response team to address criticism about Benghazi during her book tour."
By Connor Williams | June 3, 2014 | 12:50 PM EDT
Addressing the critics of the Obama administration’s prisoner swap for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky posited that this controversy represents the Right’s new Benghazi, by which he means a new scandal obsession which will prove fruitless.
The absurdity in the piece is unrelenting; Tomasky claims that “Bergdahl may well end up being the flimsy excuse for the impeachment hearings they’ve been dreaming of.”
By Paul Bremmer | May 30, 2014 | 5:15 PM EDT
On Thursday, Charlie Rose spent the entire commercial-free hour of his PBS show interviewing Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice, yet never asked her a single question about the 2012 Benghazi attacks or her role in disseminating faulty talking points afterward. In fact, the B-word never escaped Rose’s nor Rice’s lips during the entire show.
There were, however, a few moments when a question about Benghazi would have seemed appropriate. Early in the interview, Rose asked where in the world America’s core interests were under attack at the moment. Rice pointed to the ongoing terrorist threat:
By Kyle Drennen | May 30, 2014 | 11:09 AM EDT
On Friday, both NBC's Today and CBS This Morning dutifully promoted quotes from Hillary Clinton's new memoir leaked to Politico of the former Secretary of State blasting critics of her mishandling of the Benghazi terrorist attack. Today co-host Savannah Guthrie proclaimed: "If there was any doubt Hillary Clinton's clearly ready to go on offense on this." Political director Chuck Todd agreed: "There's no doubt at all. In fact, there's a concerted campaign effort." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
On CBS This Morning, correspondent Nancy Cordes declared: "...the former Secretary of State strikes a defiant tone about the attack and all the investigations into it..." Moments later, Cordes observed: "Democrats are going to see this as a kind of template for how to talk about the Benghazi attacks. In fact, the Clinton team is reportedly meeting with Democratic groups to explain her tone in the book so that everyone is on the same page."
By Kyle Drennen | May 22, 2014 | 3:29 PM EDT
At the top of her 12 p.m. ET hour MSNBC show on Thursday, host Andrea Mitchell proclaimed: "The Benghazi dozen, five Democrats now agreeing to join seven Republican inquisitors after failing to block the new Benghazi probe. Is it a witch hunt or a truth squad?" [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
In an interview that followed with Maryland Congressman Elijah Cummings, Mitchell wondered why Democrats would bother being part of the select committee investigating the scandal: "...why the decision by your caucus – and a divided caucus it was – you had your microphone cut off by [House Oversight Committee Chairman] Daryl Issa....you and others, I think, were against playing a role in what could be, you know, a real witch hunt, according to you....Why even play the game?"
MSNBC's Wolffe: Sen. Lindsey Graham 'Auditioning for... House of Cards' by Pressing Clinton on Benghazi
By Jackie Seal | May 20, 2014 | 2:39 PM EDT MSNBC guest host Ari Melber devoted significant attention on Monday night's The Last Word to shielding potential 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton from scrutiny, both on questions about her health and on her record as President's Obama's first-term secretary of state.
As part of that effort, Melber and two panelists tackled recent comments by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) regarding Mrs. Clinton's handling of the Benghazi fiasco. Melber lamented that Graham was heretofore a member of the “serious wing” of the Republican Party who is flushing that down the drain in the interest in going down "what Jon Stewart called the Brainghazi rabbit hole to pull at her health in this theory."