On The Five last week, Eric Bolling argued, along with co-hosts Kimberly Guilfoyle and Katie Pavlich, that Benghazi is a bigger scandal that Watergate. Even though Americans don’t care about it much, Fox seems determined to harp on the subject until Obama leaves office, whether at the end of his term or, if some of them have their way, driven out, like Richard Nixon.
Last Wednesday (8/7/13), Bob Beckel said, “Watergate was a scandal, Iran Contra was a scandal. The IRS is not a scandal. …Not a scandal at that level. …It’s not a BIG scandal.”
After Katie Pavlich and Kimberly Guilfoyle, predictably, disagreed, Bolling said accusingly, “Benghazi, four dead Americans is not a scandal, but Watergate’s a scandal?”
Beckel shot back, “Ten thousand dead Americans in Iraq was a scandal.”
Bolling continued, “I’m asking about… you call Watergate a scandal, but you’re saying Benghazi’s not?”
“Are you comparing Watergate to Benghazi?” Beckel asked.
Pavlich chimed in, “There were no body bags in Watergate.”
Bolling added, “Yes, yes, I think Benghazi’s a much bigger scandal than Watergate.”
Beckel buried his face in his hands in disbelief.
Guilfoyle piled on, “Yeah, because the loss of life which should be significant is the difference that matters.”
Memo to Bolling, Pavlich and Guilfoyle: Unlike President Nixon, President Obama will not resign in disgrace because of Benghazi, no matter how much you wish it were so or try to make it so. It’s not doing a heck of a lot of harm to Hillary Clinton, either.
Incompetence at its most scandalous, but the foxies aren’t having any of that because – for them and their viewers – the Bushes are almost god-like hence untouchable, uncriticizable, infallible.
IOKIYAR, forever!
Oh, wait- The Republicans have both a far larger percentage of their overall scandals, as well as a higher average death count per incident.
I’ll take why Fox News act like Watergate is the only GOP scandal for 500…
Watergate was all about a President in office doing something he shouldn’t be doing with the express intention of subverting the foundations of democracy. That’s treason, as well as a scandal in my book.
Nobody died over Watergate, you say? I agree but America, itself, was at serious risk of disappearing. That’s a “death” that neither you nor I would wish (I trust).
Nobody died over Iran Contra, you (didn’t yet) say? I agree but a lot of non-Americans actually did, mostly along the Iran-Iraq border but also in Latin America. Do their lives not count? I think they should, at least for any right-thinking, going-to-church-on-Sunday American.
Nobody died as a result of the outing of Valeria Plame, you (didn’t yet) say? But a top secret service operative was shot down and all of her painfully protected sources came down with her. How many Americans and others will die as a result of that one has yet to be determined but I suspect it will be lots.
For the bobbling heads on Fox News, treason is not a scandal worth bothering about if the perps were Reps. America may have been caught with its pants down at Benghazi but nobody’s as yet found anything like treason to be involved … and – personally – I don’t think anybody will.
The speculation on Fox News fizzles out as soon as the facts are known. Try it, sometime.
If Benghazi was a scandal because terrorists attacked and four people died, what does that make 9/11?
Oh, and what about the WMD lie scandal? If four people are a scandal, 4,000+ is a hell of a scandal!
If at first you don’t succeed…well you know the rest.
For myself, I’ve had one stepbrother and multiple good friends who were sent to Iraq repeatedly during the George W. Bush presidency. My stepbrother was even sent back to Iraq with a shoulder condition that made handling a rifle an extremely difficult proposition.
I’m not really sure what your argument is regarding parades or negotiations. You may not have noticed this, but the Obama Administration has actually been much more aggressive in its attacks on terrorists than the Bush Administration had been. And this is something for which the left has had major criticisms of President Obama. Right wing pundits don’t like to acknowledge this, but it doesn’t change the facts.
“And if we have all these terrorist groups on the run, they must be running like hell to stay away from Obama on this one. Makes the U.S. look damn feeble if they cannot after almost one year track down the bastards and kill them.”
Hey D N: if you’re that concerned about terrorism, may I suggest the following:
HOW ABOUT YOU OR YOUR MILITARY AGED LOVED ONES ENLISTING? I’m sure the line at your local armed forces recruiting station is not long. You wouldn’t happen to be another neocon PFC (Privileged Fascist Chickenhawk) who always expects people not as fortunate as you to fight and die in wars, would you?
Watergate was matter of criminal behavior being ordered and executed by the highest levels of the Nixon White House. It resulted in jail terms, public repudiation and the only time in history we have seen a President forced to resign in disgrace. It was a gigantic scandal, and there’s a good reason why it and the Nixon Administration are looked at with disdain.
Arguing about the attack on the Benghazi consulate is a different matter. The attack was carried out by a group taking advantage of the total unrest sweeping the region in general and Libya in specific at that time. It’s very strange that the right wing wants to forget about the inflammatory video, when at the time they were crowing about how the whole area was on fire. The day before the attack, Fox News repeatedly ran the video of our embassy in Cairo having its flag pulled down and burned. But once this attack happened, Fox News decided to abandon the earlier approach and go with the meme that the Obama Administration was unable to deal with terrorism. The strategy, meant to help Mitt Romney’s campaign, backfired as we all saw last fall. Given what we’ve seen of the charges being filed and the work being done by the FBI, I wouldn’t be so hasty to call anyone “feeble”. I also find it interesting that the right wing told opponents of George W. Bush’s foreign policy blunders that they were being treasonous. And yet the right wing holds a different standard for their own opposition to President Obama’s foreign policy. So questioning George W. Bush was being disloyal and treasonous in a time of war. But attacking Barack Obama’s foreign policy is proper and patriotic.
The right wing really needs to think about its behavior on these matters. This isn’t the George W. Bush Presidency where you had the Justice Dept getting caught in repeated malfeasance, the Attorney General being forced to resign in disgrace, the President being forced to withdraw a Supreme Court nominee and a major criminal scandal erupting over the Bush Administration’s attack on Joe Wilson. This isn’t the Reagan Administration, where you had a criminal “off the shelf” operation running from inside the White House to illegally fund operations in Central America via the illegal sale of weapons to Iran. (Anyone curious about how bad this got can easily find the material by checking the National Security Archive, which has extensively documented it.) And this isn’t the Nixon Administration, which crumbled under the weight of its own infamous criminality.
It’s fairly obvious that the right wing is frantically searching for some kind of “magic bullet” to accomplish what they’ve failed to do regarding President Obama. They’ve made running the government a miserable prospect, but they haven’t been able to stop it. They’ve tried to hound Obama at every turn, but they have not driven him from office, nor will they. They tried to obstruct him enough to make it impossible for him to win a 2nd term, and he won anyway. They’ve tried to reach for anything they could wave around as a scandal, but that attempt has revealed more about the right wing’s desperation than it has about any real issues. It’s one thing to argue with the Obama Administration over its policies – that’s fair game at any time. It’s another thing to repeatedly attempt to accuse Obama of criminality.
Benghazi; didn’t he have a TV show in the 1960’s, ‘Run For Your Life?’
Sounds familiar …
Benghazi … Benghazi… was that the one where President Obama was leading the charge and Secretary Clinton was driving the get-away car? Or was that the one where President Obama was sending secret thought messages to the Republican IRS agent in Cincinnati to sell guns to TeaBaggers while burning the Constitution?
Oh shasbot…
I am having trouble keeping all the Murdoch Media/Fox Networks “scandals” straight.
Ema Nymton
~ @ : o ?
.
They’re assuming that people simply don’t know about Watergate or the many, many scandals that plagued the Nixon, Reagan and Bush administrations. Benghazi was a situation where a consulate was attacked in the middle of region-wide rioting last fall. That’s not the same thing as blatant criminal malfeasance being supervised by high level people inside a President’s cabinet. Fox News knows this. They’re counting on their viewers NOT knowing that difference.