Friday morning on MSNBC Morning Joe, Bob Woodward compared the Benghazi talking points edits to those President Richard Nixon’s made, which eventually lead to his impeachment. Woodward stated, "I would not dismiss Benghazi. It’s a very serious issue."
SAM STEIN: Let me just say this. I think you're absolutely right. It feeds into this notion that either government is inept or corrupt. You know, it's hard for me to see how the White House gets out of this without coming off a little bit damaged in their other elements of legislation. I will say this, with respect to the criticism of the White House, there's two threads. One we're hearing from House Republicans, the arrogance of power, and the other is that Obama wasn't there and absente. Those two don’t actually -- they compete with each other. I think you're right, though, it hurts immigration reform and gun control, going forward it gives this bad imagery.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Bob Woodward, do you agree with that and on the issue of inept or corrupt, where do you lean? Because I just can't imagine this is incompetence it would have to be incredibly stupid.
BOB WOODWARD: Well I think we have to keep an open mind on that you're talking about government not working but who's in charge of the executive branch. You go to the Constitution and the President has sole responsibility for the executive branch. This rests on him. You were talking earlier about kind of dismissing the Benghazi issue as one that's just political and the president recently said it's a side show, but if you read through all these e-mails, you see that everyone in the government is saying, oh, let's not tell the public that terrorists were involved, people connected to Al-Qaeda. Let’s not tell the public that there were warnings. I hate to show, this is one of the documents with the editing that one of the people in the state department said, oh, let's not let these things out. And I have it to go back 40 years to Watergate when Nixon put out his edited transcripts of the conversations and he personally went through them and said let's not tell this, let's not show this. I would not dismiss Benghazi. It’s a very serious issue. As people keep saying, four people were killed. You look at the hydraulic pressure that was in the system to not tell the truth, and, you know, we use this term and the government uses this term, talking points. Talking points, as we know, are like legal briefs. They’re an argument on one side. We need to get rid of talking point and they need to put out statements or papers that are truth documents. Okay. This is all we know.