Last night, Major Garrett, formerly of Fox News but now with CBS News, reported that Republican-leaked emails that supposedly showed President Obama had meddled with talking points about the attack on Benghazi last September 11 - well, didn't. And how did Fox News react to this? By more or less ignoring it - and demanding further investigation.
As Media Matters posted, here's what Garrett reported on last night's CBS Evening News:
MAJOR GARRETT: Scott, Republicans have claimed that the State Department under Hillary Clinton was trying to protect itself from criticism. The White House released the real e-mails late yesterday, and here's what we found when we compared them to the quotes that had been provided by Republicans. One e-mail was written by Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes.On Friday, Republicans leaked what they said was a quote from Rhodes. "We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don't want to undermine the FBI investigation." But it turns out, in the actual e-mail Rhodes did not mention the State Department. It read "We need to resolve this in a way that respects all of the relevant equities, particularly the investigation." Republicans also provided what they said was a quote from an e-mail written by State Department Spokesman Victoria Nuland. The Republican version quotes Nuland discussing: "The penultimate point is a paragraph talking about all the previous warnings provided by the Agency about al-Qaeda's presence and activities of al-Qaeda." The actual e-mail from Nuland says: the "...penultimate point could be abused by Members to beat the State Department for not paying attention to Agency warnings..." The C.I.A. agreed with the concerns raised by the State Department and revised the talking points to make them less specific than the C.I.A.'s original version, eliminating references to al-Qaeda and affiliates and earlier security warnings. There is no evidence, Scott, the White House orchestrated these changes.
Garrett didn't say how the mistakes could have been made. Did Republicans alter the emails or just make a mistake? Whatever the reason, considering how Fox News has been foaming at the mouth accusing the White House of manipulating talking points, you'd think this would have been big news on the "fair and balanced" network. But no.
In a discussion with Cheney-apologist Stephen Hayes last night, Greta Van Susteren pretty much ignored Garrett's revelation and instead suggested that the emails had been cherry-picked. Hayes demanded further investigations. As he spoke, a friendly Fox banner read: GOP: SHOW US THE EMAILS! DEMANDS FOR MORE BENGHAZI DOCUMENTS. Now, much as I think I've heard more than I ever need to know about Benghazi, I'll grant that it's possible there are more legitimate questions that remain unanswered. However, the fact that "liberal" Van Susteren both failed to highlight the Republican misinformation as well as the lack of any smoking gun against the President speaks volumes about Fox's real intent.
The home page on FoxNews.com also speaks volumes.
Wanna guess what the next big scandal will be if this turns out to not be a mistake? It’s already not looking good for them, seeing as how ABC basically admitted to being in on it during their retraction of the Rhodes Email…
The only reason it got dredged up again was because Fox News and the GOP wanted to embarass HIllary on her way out of office in January. And then when Gregory Hicks and company wanted to make statements to Congress in rebuttal to Hillary, the matter was dredged up yet again.
But all we’re proving with more and more papers on the matter is that there really isn’t anything here. And the more papers that the Obama Admin provides, the more papers will be demanded by the GOP. It’s the same thing as the birth certificate. Hillary’s campaign throws out a nasty below-the-belt shot during a primary and the GOP runs with it. Obama releases the publicly available document, and the birthers and the GOP say “That’s not enough. Give us the ‘Long Form’ version”. After more nonsense about it, including Donald Trump repeatedly lying about it on national television, Obama releases the ‘Long Form’. And the birthers and the GOP say “That’s not enough. Might be a forgery even though that’s ridiculous. Tell you what, give us all of Obama’s school transcripts and writings too.” The nonsense never stops. If he provided those papers, they’d then ask for all of his drafts from the college years. And then they’d ask for his high school essays. And then they’d ask for his middle school essays. It never ends, and feeding the nonsense gets us nowhere.
With Benghazi, these guys just want to keep the story alive, by any means possible. They know there isn’t anything here, but just keeping it alive allows them to continue to throw vicious political smears around while hiding behind the bodies of the ambassador and the other three men who were killed. In the end, the matter will be remembered as a minor footnote, a desperate attempt to rewrite history and only the latest GOP smear campaign against an administration they despise.
The GOP is dirty from its neck on down. With this latest news, it shows how low Reince and the clowns will go to win the White House in 2016.
We posted earlier that this latest attempted against President Obama and Clinton would backfire.
Wait until you see what’s coming down the pipe with the Tea Nuts and their supporters. The teapots and the rest of the conservative extremists will have egg all over their faces when the real truth comes out.
Purchase a large box of popcorn!
Their underlings on the network have been making unsubstantiated accusations without facts to back up said accusations. We the people deserve to see the e-mail chain to see if this was directed from the top down.
I’m asking for people to resign(fired) at this time. Later, after the resignations, I’ll be dissatisfied with that and will be wondering aloud who will be fired. After any firings I’ll be looking to impeachment(deportation) proceedings for Rupy and Jabba and ONLY THEN will I consider this matter closed!
