Ken Berwitz
Anyone who thinks this hearing is going to be a friendly political back-and-forth, had better buckle his/her seat belts.
Trey Gowdy just opened with an absolute lambasting of Hillary Clinton and the Democrats on the committee. He held back nothing.
Ranking Democrat spent his time doing nothing but attacking the committee.
Now Hillary Clinton is making a political speech. Instead of answering for Benghazi she has first told us how wonderful the four dead Americans were, and now she is telling us what we should do in the future. Not one word about what she is there to testify about.
If Republicans allow her to stay on script – and that is what this is, a script – they will give her exactly what she wants, and needs.
If they don\’t, and force her to actually give answers she has not rehearsed, this will be worthwhile.
12:15PM Mike Pompeo (R-Kansas) is absolutely blowing Clinton apart. He is putting up the numbers to show that Benghazi was virtually ignored by Clinton – but everything Sidney Blumenthal sent to her got full attention. Devastating.
12:37PM Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) is proving – that\’s not an opinion, it\’s a fact – proving that Hillary Clinton lied to our faces about the attack. He showed that she called it a video to the public, but, less than one hour later, was privately saying that it was not. No Hillary horselaughs here, folks. The look on her face says everything.
From about 1:05 to 115 Chairman Trey Gowdy pummels Clinton on her emails involving Sidney Blumenthal. Elijah Cummings has a holy fit over it, essentially calls Gowdy a liar, then demands all materials from Blumenthal be released because he wants “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth” (his unfortunate pronunciation of “truth” notwithstanding). Adam Schiff joins Cummings in making this demand. Gowdy says this is not the forum for a vote on releasing the information and he will take a vote when the committee reconvenes next week. Cummings continues his holy fit. Session ends with Schiff complaining that all Gowdy asked about was Blumenthal, and Gowdy, obviously steaming over Cummings\’ accusations – which he answered (your call on whether his answer held water) assured Schiff that if he thought the first round of questions about Blumenthal was a problem, wait for the next round. Real fireworks.
3:17 Mike Pompeo directly attacks Democrats by pointing out they keep saying they want answers, but not one of them are asking questions to get at answers, only to attack Republicans for doing the asking…..Trey Gowdy interjects (this may be a bit out of order) that the same people who have no problem with $50 million dollars spent to train all of 5 people in Afghanistan are screaming about $5 million spent to get answers for the families of the Benghazi dead….
…and a lot more of the same.
My expectation: despite the fact that Ms. Clinton was caught in several obvious lies (about her relationship with Blumenthal, his influence on her actions, what she said about the attack after it occurred, and more), our media will probably see her as “winning” on the grounds that she maintained her composure and didn\’t fly off the handle (i.e. no “what difference does it make” moment).
We\’ll see….
