Conservative Writer Stephen Hayes Agrees: Critics Mischaracterized Clinton’s Benghazi Testimony
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on May 30th, 2014 11:08 pm by HL
Conservative Writer Stephen Hayes Agrees: Critics Mischaracterized Clinton’s Benghazi Testimony
Weekly Standard writer and Fox News contributor Stephen Hayes broke ranks from his fellow conservatives and colleagues at Fox by agreeing with Hillary Clinton’s assessment that her critics have mischaracterized her congressional testimony on the Benghazi attacks.
On May 30 Politico published advance excerpts from Clinton’s upcoming memoir, Hard Choices, in which she details her time at the State Department during the attacks in Benghazi and criticizes Republican efforts to exploit the tragedy. Writing on her congressional testimony on the attacks, Clinton argued that the controversy surrounding her response to a question from Sen. Ron Johnson is “yet another example of the terrible politicization of this tragedy.” Clinton points out that her”what difference at this point does it make” statement did not “mean that I was somehow minimizing the tragedy of Benghazi” and that “many of those trying to make hay of it know that, but don’t care.”
In a May 30 post at The Weekly Standard, Hayes agreed that Clinton’s critics have “badly mischaracterized the now infamous question.” Hayes went on to correctly note that Clinton’s response was simply “an attempt to redirect the questioning from its focus on the hours before the attacks to preventing similar attacks in the future”:
Hillary Clinton is right about Benghazi — or at least she’s right about one thing.
According to a story by Maggie Haberman about the Benghazi chapter in Clinton’s forthcoming book Hard Choices, the former secretary of state contends that some of her critics have badly mischaracterized the now infamous question she asked at a January 23, 2012, congressional hearing: “What difference, at this point, does it make?”
She’s right, they have. The question, which came in the middle of a heated back-and-forth with U.S. senator Ron Johnson, was not so much a declaration of indifference as it was an attempt to redirect the questioning from its focus on the hours before the attacks to preventing similar attacks in the future.
Hayes has previously defended Clinton from attacks mischarcterizing her exchange. On the April 30 edition of Hannity, Hayes stood up for Clinton against those who labeled her attitude about the attack as indifferent and again corrected the record:
HAYES: Let me start by actually defending Hillary Clinton, which I don’t do often in the context of Benghazi. You know, that sound bite has been, I think, misinterpreted by some to be a declaration of her indifference as to what had actually happened on the ground in Benghazi when she says, “What difference, at this point, does it make?” She wasn’t saying, basically, I don’t care, you know, we’re beyond it, it doesn’t matter. What she was saying is it doesn’t matter how it happened.
Despite Hayes’ correction to critics who willfully misinterpreted Clinton’s words, conservatives continue to hold up her remarks as a false indication of indifference.
