Yesterday, USA Today reported that the Republicans’ Benghazi Select Committee has a budget of $3.3 million, higher than the House Veterans Affairs and Ethics committees. Perhaps mindful that this might not be an easy sell, first co-host Kimberly Guilfoyle blamed the Obama administration for the expense. Then, Fox’s Dr. Keith Ablow promoted the bogus excuse that we need to find out whether or not Hillary Clinton suffers from brain damage.
On today's Outnumbered, four of the five co-hosts were eager to spend this money on yet another investigation despite the millions of taxpayer dollars already spent complying with the previous ones. As Media Matters has documented, Fox News demanded and helped spur the House Republicans to form the Benghazi Select Committee. So it was not surprising that nobody vigorously challenged the cost. Some of the justifications, however, might strike even some Fox loyals as far-fetched.
Guilfoyle, the host of the segment, immediately moved to blame the Obama administration for the price tag. She said to Outnumbered’s “one lucky guy” for the day:
What should be more outrageous, perhaps, Dr. Ablow, is the fact that this administration forces us to spend hard-working dollars from American taxpayers again into investigations that they could just comply with instead of having us dance around the carousel every time to try and get some information.
Ablow saw Guilfoyle’s talking point and raised her one. Or two.
Absolutely. So it’s tragic that this toll couldn’t be one-tenth the price because if people were more forthcoming, the price would be less expensive. However, $3.3 million to try and shore up our system of government and hold people accountable is nothing. If this cost $33 million, we have to go forward because if we have a liar as president of the United States, or as secretary of state at that time, it’s worth $33 million to ferret out the untruthfulness and to proceed toward the light instead of the dark.
…We can’t even get Hillary Clinton to tell us what the Coke-bottle lenses were for. She’s out there saying things out of hand like, ‘What difference does it make if it was a movie or not?’ Which seems to me to have been a disinhibited statement. She’s wearing these thick lenses. We can’t find out from her, was that due to head trauma? What was that? We can’t get a simple answer on that, let alone who and why four Americans were lost.
As has been previously reported as early as January 2013, Clinton’s special glasses are commonly prescribed to help people deal with double vision as a lingering, but temporary, effect of concussions. If Ablow, a medical doctor, himself, really didn’t know and wanted to, he could have easily found out.
Instead, Ablow continued by explicitly suggesting Clinton is brain damaged.
She looks like a different woman! …Then if you said something outrageous, like ‘Who cares what the truth is’ – we say... Come on, you’ve gotta come to the neurologist.
Not a single person on the panel challenged him.
As we have previously posted, Karl Rove first floated the baseless brain damage story in May. Fox News and its pundits immediately set to work as an echo chamber. But even on Fox, a medical doctor should know better. Even one as nutty as Ablow.
Watch the bogus analysis below.
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/foxs-keith-ablow-officially-confirms-what-we-all-knew-about-him-already/
The Fox “News” suits hires these bimbettes to draw older men whose only interest is to watch their legs.
Calling that quack a “Dr.” is a stretch. The only people who are brain damaged are the over the age 60 Fox “News” viewers.
It’s just too bad there aren’t any Dems in Congress willing to call out these GOP grandstanders. You know, do a commercial along the lines of “While Congressional Republicans were busy spending more millions of dollars on investigations that went nowhere, scores of veterans died because they couldn’t get into VA clinics—clinics that could’ve desperately used the money the GOP wasted. For a party that claims to be ‘fiscally responsible,’ the GOP has a funny way of showing it. Millions so someone can show off for the cameras while our veterans suffer.”