“The Democrats saved their most raucous debate for what could be their last,” writes the New York Times’s Maggie Haberman about last night’s political throwdown in Florida. “For two hours, Hillary Clinton and Senator[score]Bernie Sanders[/score] of Vermont traded sharp attacks.”
Doubtless Clinton sees the stakes rising following her surprise loss to Sanders in Michigan. And as the American public saw during her first congressional testimony on Benghazi — when she exasperatedly asked rhetorically “What difference does it make” how four Americans died? — she has a short fuse.
That fuse was tested again last night, over the same issue, Benghazi, and over the war of words that has erupted between the former secretary of state and the families of the four Americans killed in the terrorist raid.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
During the debate, Clinton was by moderator Jorge Ramos whether she lied to the families about the cause of the deadly attack on the U.S. consulate, as all have claimed.
Here is her response. The “she” Clinton refers to is Pat Smith, mother of Sean Smith.
Smith has insisted that Clinton told the families during their brief meeting at Andrews Air Force Base on Sept. 14, 2012, standing over the coffins of their slain relatives, that the attacks had resulted from an angry mob reacting to an anti-Muslim video.
Three separate family members — Michael Ingmire (Sean Smith’s uncle), Kate Quigley (Glen Doherty’s sister), Charles Woods (Tyrone Woods’s father) — have corroborated Pat Smith’s account. Woods’s father kept handwritten notes of the meeting with Clinton. These read in part, “We are going to have the filmmaker arrested who was responsible for the death of your son.”
When the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes spoke with the elder Woods, he said “I remember those words: ‘who was responsible for the death of your son.’ She was blaming him and blaming the movie.”
After his testimony before Congress earlier this year, Ingmire referred to Clinton as a “serial liar” and “definitely incompetent.” He later told Fox News host Sean Hannity that Clinton “really has a difficult time maintaining a consistent level of truth.” It’s an opinion shared by a majority of American voters.
Clinton also told the Conway Daily Sun that using Benghazi and the deaths of Americans for political purposes “dishonors them.”
Look who’s talking.
Cross-posted in altered form at the Mental Recession
