Most of us at Liberal America know that Hillary Clinton’s appearance before the House “What about Benghaaazi?” committee was an unmitigated disaster for the Republicans. But guess what? Even some right-leaning media outlets have concluded that the 11-hour marathon made the GOP look foolish.
The first right-wing media post-mortem came from American Family Radio morning drive-time host Sandy Rios. She watched the first two hours of the hearing and wrung her hands at how committee chairman Trey Gowdy and his fellow Republicans let Hillary “go on and on and on,” despite knowing that she has had “more experience than any living woman” at “defending herself against scandals under oath.” Letting Hillary do this was “a disaster just waiting to happen.”
How’s that, you ask? Well, according to Rios, it allowed Hillary to look “composed” and “presidential,” even though it should have been obvious that she was “lying.” It was mainly because, from where she was sitting, the committee’s Republicans looked incompetent. “They’re not capable!” she cried. As she saw it, they were “lined up with a professional” against whom they stood no chance. By all rights, Rios said, Gowdy should have only allowed himself and any other former prosecutors on the panel to ask questions — a suggestion that Gowdy should have shut out Elijah Cummings and the Democrats on the committee from questioning her.
Well, that’s interesting. Anyone who wasn’t watching through the prism of right-wing media would have seen the Republicans look really petty at times. For instance, at around 7:15, Martha Roby of Alabama asked Hillary whether she was at home alone on “the whole night” of September 11, 2012 — the night the attack took place. Hillary replied with a laugh, “Yes, the whole night.”
Most of those still in the gallery broke out laughing as well — but not Roby. She snapped, “Well, I don’t know why you think that’s funny.” Any unbiased observer would conclude that Roby was on a fishing trip. With questions like that, it’s probably no wonder that Rios thought Roby and the other Republicans looked incompetent.
Then again, a good number of right-wingers may not have seen this exchange. Mediaite noticed that by 5 p.m., Fox News Channel had gone back to regular programming while the other major news channels continued to cover the hearing live. That’s rather ironic. More than any other media outlet, the fair and balanced network continued to hype up the prospect of a scandal even when it was obvious to the rest of us that there was nothing there. Roger Ailes finally got what he wanted — Hillary under the hot lights, being grilled for a scandal that he and his network created, and yet, he had to cut back to regular programming? Priceless.
If the media wing of the right-wing hate machine concluded that Thursday’s hearing was a turkey, that’s really saying a lot.
Featured image via CNN video screen capture, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.
