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Hillary Clinton's Benghazi Testimony: Style Versus Substance

October 29, 2015

Many journalists who covered Hillary Clinton’s testimony about the Benghazi terrorist attack last week were more interested in praising Clinton for her brilliance than in scrutinizing what she said, a Free Beacon supercut finds.

Clinton, who, by the way, is coming off of a fabulous ten-day stretch, was victorious, graceful, calm, articulate, impeccable, disciplined, and savvy, according to the theater critics covering her testimony.

Only a handful of journalists chose to scrutinize Clinton’s testimony. Those who did, like Steve Hayes of the Weekly Standard, found discrepancies.

Clinton said she knew within hours that the Benghazi event was a coordinated terrorist attack carried out by an "al-Qaeda-like group." At the time, she told the public that it was a spontaneous reaction by locals to an anti-Islam video.

If they were not so busy talking about the hearing, reporters might have been able to explore why the nation’s top diplomat misled the public about a terrorist attack two months before a presidential election.

Transcript below:

STEVE HAYES: I would say the lead from the day so far is Hillary Clinton repeatedly offers false or misleading testimony, and journalists yawn.

STEVE KORNACKI: Hillary Clinton today taking a victory lap after her 11-hour marathon hearing on Benghazi yesterday. Through a mix of her discipline, political savvy, and some lucky breaks, she has managed to run the table

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: They knew it was a terror attack, they knew that from Gregory Hicks who was on the ground in Tripoli. And yet, they go ahead and put Susan Rice on that weekend and tell a tale that is completely false.

TARA DOWDELL: She answered questions and she did so gracefully, she did so calmly, and she did so articulately.

MANU RAJU: There are little episodes from that hearing that could turn out to hurt her in a couple months. Particularly when she said that 90 to 95 percent of her emails were on State Department servers. We don’t really know where she came up with that figure.

JOHN BERMAN: I work in Manhattan, which is right next to Brooklyn, which is where the Clinton campaign has its headquarters. There was something between a sigh of relief and a shriek of joy coming from Brooklyn.

JULIE PACE: Absolutely, absolutely.

CHRIS WALLACE: Does that bother you, as Jim Jordan seemed to point out, that she was blaming it on the video publically and telling Chelsea it was an attack and telling the Egyptian prime minister—?

BOB WOODWARD: It better bother us.

AB STODDARD: What she did today was brilliant. She was an impeccable witness because there are no sound bites where she implodes.

STEVE HAYES: She was presented with her own words that contradicted everything they had said, and she had no answer for that. So if you care about substance and facts, she’s in trouble.