That was ... not at all fast, actually. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy seems to have finally realized that
openly praising the Benghazi Committee for its accomplishments in attacking Hillary Clinton looks just a little bad. You're not supposed to admit when your investigation that's supposedly above politics is actually a partisan witch hunt, and making your party look bad is not the best campaign move when you are, as McCarthy is, the favored candidate to be the next speaker of the House. So McCarthy is falling in line with the
other Republicans who've tried to unring that particular bell. Naturally, McCarthy
went on Fox News for that effort:
"This committee was set up for one sole purpose, to find the truth on behalf of families for four dead Americans," McCarthy told Bret Baier. "Now, I did not imply in any way that that work is political, of course it is not. Look at the way they have carried themselves out."
He added: "That committee is solely to get the truth out, but it happened within the truth you found out about a server," a reference to the private email server Clinton has admitted she maintained while secretary of state. "This committee's sole purpose is to find the truth why four Americans were killed that night, and that is the work they have done, that is the hearings they have done, they have been applauded on all sides of the aisle, so it was never my intention to say that."
Dude, you said versions of it twice! The really blunt "Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable right? But we put together a Benghazi Special Committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping" version on Fox News, the
slightly more veiled version on CNN.
As for McCarthy's newfound claim that "of course it is not" political because "look at the way they have carried themselves out," we did look at how the Benghazi Committee has operated, and it's an ugly story. The committee has been a Republican fundraising hook from the beginning, its chair sees himself not as an investigator but as a prosecutor, it has repeatedly leaked false information to the press, it's cost millions of dollars and is taking longer than the committees to investigate Hurricane Katrina response or 9/11, and its focus this year has been almost exclusively on Hillary Clinton, to the exclusion of the Benghazi attacks that McCarthy now wants us to believe are its "sole purpose." McCarthy admitted—even bragged about—the truth. Just because he's come out a couple days later to deny the truth of what he said doesn't change reality.