Republican Congressman Mike Pompeo has been thinking long and hard about his rather odd "performance" during his House Select Committee's interrogation of Hillary Clinton over Benghazi. As has, apparently, his whole family.
During a speech at the Wichita Pachyderm Club last week, Pompeo told the gathered audience that he thought he’d done well at the Benghazi hearing — unlike the “C” and “F” his family gave him, on his line of questioning to Clinton.
We're going to let the Wichita Pachyderm Club reference sail by, but you can insert your own jokes if you like.
“My second set of questions I frankly didn’t do as well. It was more difficult to control her extended answers — I, it was trickier and I let my emotion get ahold of me a little bit more, you can go back and watch it, it only takes ten minutes, I wasn’t as good.”
“I gave myself a ‘C.’ My wife gave me an ‘F,’” Pompeo said.
There are, of course, quite a few sensible ways to rate how the "questioning" went. Was new information obtained? Was any information obtained? Did you ask an actual question, as opposed to wandering off on increasingly tangential paths of paranoia and other people's conspiracy theories? Did you come off as an unhinged nut?
But if "I let my emotion get ahold of me" is the verdict, after an apparently (cough) excessive review of the tapes, than whatever. Pompeo, if you recall, was the congressman who spent his time attempting to prove that because Ambassador Chris Stevens had never been to Hillary Clinton's house, Hillary Clinton did not care if he lived or died. Or something to that effect. Yes, a real treasure trove of information, this House Select Committee. You can really see the results of all the time and money they've spent.