Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) look pretty foolish yesterday during a hearing on Benghazi. He made matters worse for himself after the hearing -- accusing Clinton of faking her emotions -- though he eventually expressed some regret for his churlishness.
But Johnson apparently learned very little from the incident.
For reasons that could only make sense to Johnson and conspiracy theorists, the far-right Wisconsinite remains preoccupied with preliminary intelligence reports from September that there were protests in Benghazi before the deadly violence erupted. Today, during John Kerry's confirmation hearing, Johnson wanted the Democrat to commit publicly to help him "find out what actually happened." Kerry explained that we already know what actually happened.
Kerry: Senator, in all fairness, we do know what happened. I think it is very clear. Were you at the briefing with the tapes?
Johnson: No.
Kerry: Well, there was a briefing with tapes, which we all saw, those of us who went to it, which made it crystal clear. We sat for several hours with our intel folks who described to us precisely what we were seeing. We saw all of the events unfold. We had a very complete and detailed description.
Johnson responded he still wants to know about the formation of the preliminary talking points, but (a) his obsession with this narrow aspect has become nonsensical; and (b) he's preoccupied with trivia that's already been addressed more than once. The early intelligence said there were protests that preceded the violence. Subsequent intelligence provided additional, more accurate, information.
Johnson apparently can't let this go because he and some conspiracy theorists are convinced there's a secret political scheme hidden just out of view, but for the second time in two days, the senator had been left looking like he has no idea what he's talking about.
And after reviewing the last several months, a pattern emerges: Johnson routinely seems to have no idea what he's talking about.
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Since when do republicants not struggle with reality and facts?
Mr. & Mrs. Stevens:
“With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans! Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they'd go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make?!!”
Love, Hillary Foster Clinton
Translation. We lied, tried to deflect, and are now in search of enough time so this will be forgotten.
The problem with that is the blatant lying. It's been a public demonstration of censorship and disinformation, aimed directly at the American people. Trust cannot exist after it's been so egregiously broken.
Shooter242
Shouldn't your name be "Shoots and misses"?
Bwaaaahaha!
Believe it or not, there are certain times when peoples lives are at risk if some info is give. We aren't the only ones with TV, radio and Internet. Sec Clinton said it was an attack by heavily armed militants the very next day. President Obama called it terrorism The very next morning. just how much clasified inof do you want out there putting more people in harms way?
Blatant lying is when a government official tells you that Iraq is getting aluminum tubes to build centrifuges or buying yellow-cake uranium when it already knows that's not true. This was receiving several stories during a confusing and violent episode where we have little intelligence, and taking a few days to sort out which stories were true and which could be told without endangering secret operatives in the area. There is zero, zero evidence of a cover-up, and you'll look less like a fool the sooner you drop the conspiracy theories.
Bull. The deception was carried out for weeks. The only one in jail is the film maker. Even factcheck.org says you're wrong.
http://www.factcheck.org/2012/10/benghazi-timeline/
I would much prefer to watch the vidio of Sec Clinton telling it and the one of the President in the Rose garden telling it. But go ahead and get 3rd hand info.
larry, if you have links to your assertions it's time to put them on the table.
It isn't just that they have a hard time with reality and facts. It's more a matter of not caring. Especially when they are tr0lls.
Consider how tr0lls often behave regarding facts. They demand to know such-and-such, they demand proofs, and when knowledge is given and questions answered they continue making the same demands in blithe disregard of all the enlightenment bestowed upon them. They, and Johnson, know perfectly well that all their questions were answered. His goal is just to wind people up, not to get answers. He's a tr0ll, that's all.
Kick him off the committee if he isn't going to do his job and go to briefings.
Gosh dumb dumb...President Obama failed to hold an Intelligence Meeting for the 6 months leading up to his Banghazi Cover-up
thanks "Truth" Crusader -- just when i was most missing the lies from the 2012 campaign, you give me one of the greatest hits!
True. It sure is nice to know you have all the info on what the WH does and soesn't do. Would you care to let us know how? And just for you info, the WH has already given the times and dates those meetings were taking place. Another right wing lie debunked, more than once.
Hard to be a Truth Crusader when you are so full of lies.
Hard to be a Truth Crusader when you wouldn't know the truth if it bit your ass, but thanks for the continuing demonstration of what a moron too stupid to know they're a moron looks like.
I have a feeling that the reason he is looking so hard for "a secret political scheme hidden just out of view" is because the GOP always have one. It's been a standard in their playbook for years going back at least as far as Iran-Contra. Consider virtually all of the great foreign policy and intelligence disasters of the last 30 years and there were republicans behind every last one of them.
Good thought. Projection on his part may be the reason that Johnson says what he does.
Struggle on, Senator, struggle on. Foolish political floundering only strengthens your opponents.
I still find it interesting that the Republicans, especially Romney, were so ready to jump on this when it happened. It's almost as if they were expecting something to happen and thought "This!"
Perhaps Johnson has been tasked with finding out what the administration knows so it can be compared with what some Republicans know...
My only fear is that what I've just written isn't snark!
And who, exactly, is surprised?
This is a desperate kind of shadow theater, a foul waste of what was once valuable legislative time and effort toward useful ends.
I no longer communicate just with my own two senators. Since any one johnson (ahem!) can dick-up the whole place, the Senate as a whole ends up representing (or NOT representing) us all. I therefore feel free to contact any one of them with well-explained opinions.
Yesterday I sent him an email from his web page. It wasn't rejected even though I had an out of state address. The guy gives Norwegians a bad name.
DKM, be proud, this guy is not from Norwegian ancestory.............the best part of him ran down the toilet bowl.
Ron Johnson and Rand Paul are the perfect examples of people that only get their news from Wing Nut Daily and the rest of the right wing noise machine.
This guy gives cheeseheads a bad name.
DOH. Let me double down on the stupid things I said yesterday.
"Senator Kerry. We all KNOW there's a vast left wing conspiracy out there, led by President Obama. Could you please tell us the REAL truth so we can make the Democrats look bad."
They assume there is a vast conspiracy on the other side because they have one of their own, with the welfare corporations and the Koch Brothers and the like.
When I was told that that there was no Santa Claus, I replied- with impeccable logic- "Oh Yeah? Then who drank the milk and ate cookies!"
I think I will run for the Senate. . .
Who knows, by now even Bill O'Reilly may be thinking Rob Johnson is nothing more than a pinhead! -Kevo
What is worse Ladies....Mitt Romney's comment taken out of context about the 47% who won't vote for him or.....
....Hillary Foster Clinton's remark about the 4 dead Americans:
“With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans! Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they'd go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make?!!”
....come now....man up gutless cowards...let us hear your spin Low-Information parasite
You are well-named. You are tireless in your crusade AGAINST the truth.
Wow! What an unfinished piece of art you are Truth Crusader! By your comment, you have betrayed yourself to be intellectually convoluted with ill-begotten conflation of disparate realities regarding time and space that have captivated your penchant for non sequitur analysis!
Oh, and what per-say constitutes a gutless coward in the canyons of your mind?
Go back to the DailyNet crowd! -Kevo
hmmm, and dear "Truthy" what was the "correct" context for Romney's 47% remark? Oh yes, we've already seen it, him talking to GOP donors and meaning exactly what he said. And if you with to say that Secretary Clinton was lying, then where is your evidence? Surely you have some, right? If you don't have it, you are a liar, what a shame.
Apparently the tuition and standards are falling at Troll College...
Truth. I think it's time you changed you name to "nothing but right wing talking points." You've yet to post the truth. And it seams, you have no desire to do so.
Moderator? Is anyone there? Hey, Moderator?
This "truther" guy is way out of the lines in his coloring book, assuming he recognizes any color but white.
To call Mme. Clinton "Hillary Foster" just takes his "truther" ancestry back to the troglodytes of the early 1990s. That was not a mistake: that was his patheticand hate-filled ignorance at its ugly best. "Inflammatory" is far too kind a name for his blather.
Hey, Moderator! Please help us keep this kind of excrement out of the MaddowBlog community. Please help!!
We should allow the possibility (shocking, I know) that instead of just being dumber than a sack of wet hammers, Johnson is a contemptible opportunist who believes if he keeps hinting at a larger conspiracy that a lot of his base believes exists, and insinuating that Democrats are all doing their part to keep the conspiracy alive, he will be heralded as a Great Thinker Asking the Questions That Demand Answers by the GOP. The Sunday shows will invite him on more often, and the constant insistence that Obama is keeping secrets from we, the people, will be his big closer, his Free Bird, his Sledge-o-Matic...
Don't get me wrong, it's entirely possible Johnson really is that stupid. I just believe in never underestimating your opponents, even when they invite it.
He's also relying on the fact that Wisconsin voters aren't paying attention.
Slappy, I agree with you. Even though it sounds like he doesn't hear himself when he talks, a part of me is sure Johnson is doing this for a reason.
These comments remind me of the following quotes from different individuals.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. - Hanlon's Razor
Heinlein's Razor Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, but don't rule out malice.
"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence" - Napoleon Bonaparte
Let's see, this would be the same Ron Johnson who defended child-abusing Catholic priests, right? I can see how that gives him some kind of moral high ground!
I think we all know the real reason behind repubs efforts at attacking Clinton right now. They see 2016, they see it is highly likely that she will be the strongest dem presidential candidate, and recent polls show she is 3 times more popular than the repub party as a whole. If they are to have even the tiniest chance at winning the White House in 4 years, the work of character assasination must begin now. They are playing with fire on this, as it is far more likely to backfire on them, increasing her favorability while driving down that of the repubs even further, if that is even possible. After all, can you really poll lower than pond scum and bubonic plague? Repubs are out to find the answer to that age-old question.
Well, they do poll lower than a root canal and head lice, among other distasteful items. I imagine that bubonic plague may eventually rise in the public estimation comparatively speaking.
Go, plague, go! I have a feeling that a colony of plague bacteria could make more intelligent decisions than most repubs.
Republicans are currently being out-polled by gonorrhea - 28-15
That larger conspiracy being; Obama is going to socialize the country on his last day in office! The part that makes it sooo plausible is he is going to do it without the help of the Democrats!!
Luz, take your meds and call you OBGYN in the morning!!
If he isn't doing it with the help of the Democrats, that means the repubs are helping him. Somehow I don't think that is likely.
And to claim that he could do it by himself means that one has no credibility at all.
And do it in one day...
It looks like Sen. Kerry, was actually very kind to the Sen. Nimrod-from-WI, as he could have said,
"I know that you're fairly new, Sen., so you need to know that we can't openly discuss classified sessions of Congress...and THAT's why you need to attend the briefings. But, if you HAD attended, you would have the answer to the question that you continue to keep asking."
Seriously...Sen. Johnson is an embarrassment to Wisconsinites.
More like carbon-based life.
I love Kerry's snarkiness. Johnson et al sure are trying to make themselves look like idiots and succeeding admirably!
They don't even have to "try" very hard. It comes natural to them.
Johnson is a total dickwad! HIs rude, churlishness only epitimizes what the core of the GOPygmies is all about.................ie: McCain, Boner, Mitch the Bigot, and the rest of the mental pygmies who pretend to be adults. Let's vote in Dems in 2014 for majority of both houses and then Hillary for 2016! I am totally embarrassed to have the rest of the world see what jackass idiots live in the GOPygmie world.
Ron could not fog a mirror. I would like Clay Matthews, linebacker for GB, to take him out with a helmet spear...............and NO FLAG!!
Gobsmacking. Ron Johnson did not attend a high-level briefing held specifically to provide the answers to the kinds of questions he has, yet he has the gall to sit there yelling about how he's been misled. This guy is a buffoon. Where are the intelligent, mature Republicans. Have they become extinct? (Rhetorical question).
Not extinct, but they no longer are part of the repub party. The right wing crazies drove them out.
They've been pushed out as RINOs and "not a real conservative", because one can't be conservative and sane at the same time, evidently.
Hillary should have given each republican a tin foil hat as her parting gift or should I say shot.
If Senator Johnson really wanted to know the truth about what happened in Benghazi
then he would be grilling the CIA. They were there it's their business to know what is going on and I'm sure they did. Perhaps they don't want that whole side of the story coming out. But of course it's easier to attack Hillary and Susan Rice because the CIA will never include a jackass like Jonson on the inside scoop.
Secretary Clinton dodges and tries to avoid Sen. Johnson's line of questioning regarding the Administration's YouTube narrative. The Senator has to repeatedly press for a responsive answer but Ms. Clinton avoids, misdirects and tries to recast the issue away from the Administration's storyline.
Go back and actually listen to Sec. Clinton and you'll see she doesn't come off well. Don't just listen, but analyze what is being said.
As she said, why does it matter whether it was a spontaneous act or if it was sparked because of a YouTube video? Did you miss the part where she said they went off of information they had at the time? As more information became available, it was made public. The Senator was trying to belittle Hilary but is failing miserably at it.
If Johnson had bothered to go to the briefing, and posed thoughtful questions that were designed to bring some clarity, and if he had done this in a respectful manner as opposed to being blatantly hostile, then maybe she would have given him a different answer instead of playing him like a fool.
But the question was about the American public being MISLED by the Obama Administration and by Secretary Clinton by pushing the YouTube narrative. Sen. Johnson was not trying to ascertain why or how the incident began.
He was repeatedly asked why it wasn't a matter that was not easily cleared up by a simple call to the evacuees. Ms. Clinton either dodged or gave silly answers such as everything was fluid and changing.
When Sec. Clinton claimed it didn't matter so much as to the origins of the incident, she was trying to recast the question AWAY FROM the initial inquiry about why the Administration MISLED the American people.
This is what I mean by "thoughtful". The reason the talking points given to Susan Rice were edited the way they were is never going to be explained to the satisfaction of John McCain or Senator Johnson, that is a fact get over it. The CIA had just as much to do with this as anybody, and their answers were rather vague as well but no body is going after them like they are going after Hillary and Susan Rice. The Republicans mislead the American People every hour of every day, why aren't they hauling each other in front of interrogation committees? Why did Condilisa Rice mis lead the American People about WMD?Where is the Republican outrage over that? So the point is that the hostile attitude towards Hillary is part of a game, no smart lawyer ever asks a question that they don't know the answer to, just as Johnson knew that the questions and the manner in which they were asked would be answered they way they were, the same way they were answered in all the independent reports, so he was playing a game and she just gave him the business that he was fully expecting from her. On the other hand a thoughtful question like what would she recommend or suggest might be done in the future to both prevent the incident in Benghazi from happening again and if something like this should happen again what guidelines should be put in place for reporting it to the American people. That was not the purpose of these hearings, they were a witch hunt and everybody knows it, "part of the game" in this case the Republicans lost. Get over it,
Get back in your UFO and fly back to WackoWorld, moron. That you believe in UFOs proves you are dumb enough to be a Republican.
Somehow I just don't believe that the people in the distrects that elect these far right congressmen are really that far right and I am not sure that the even understand the impact of their votes on the nation. Some of them are barely literate and most of them are woefully uninformed.
Well said. It's a fact that in the districts that are purely Republican the people are exposed primarily to Right wing Media outlets so they only get the message Republicans good Democrats bad. If you watch FOX News and listen to Rush and Hannity on radio and you are not well educated or intellectually developed. The opinions and belief systems you have are molded by people who don' give a damn about you, your'e on your own and if things don't go well for you it's the Dems fault The only way to combat this is to get the message out to these people that they are getting flimflammed and good luck with that.
Could not this same thing be said about districts that are purely Democrat which, if exposed to politics, are saturated with Democrats good Republicans bad? Have you listened much to MSNBC (say Ed Schultz) or did you ever listen to the old caustic fare on Air America? I think some of these guys like Mike Malloy may still be on the radio somewhere. Arguments aside, at least Hannity can speak in "thoughtful" and civil language.
If you want, you can wall yourself off into the Left-only or Right-only camps.
Kirsten Powers, a Democrat strategist who offers counterpoint opinion on FOX, says, after working in both a Democrat-only environment and now on FOX that she sees Conservatives as more open to other opinions. A George Washington University study finds that Conservatives are more tolerant of others who do not share political philosophies than Liberals are about others who differ in political opinion.
That sounds interesting - I could find a Pew study on liberal/conservative online tolerance but could not find the study specifically by George Washington Un. - perhaps you would provide a link.
Thank you,
Adam_Selene
D-bag? Party of one, D-bag?..
Once again the Public gets to watch Republicans beat a dead horse to death with a wet noodle. If they suspect there is some nefarious plot behind all this let them bring their accusations forward. My guess is that they have bought into some paranoid conspiracy theory that they don't have the political courage to voice publicly and they have no hard evidence of. In that case STFU! These guys look ridiculous.
I don't think anyone has hit upon the real reason for the aggressive behavior of the Republicans towards Hilliary Clinton. Compared with her, they are little twits with the gravitas of a dandellion. They were all totally intimidated by her and attempted to show what "real" tough guys they were. She's ten times smarter than any one of them and has stood up to real intensive grillings before any one of them were County Commissioners in their local district. They all thought that they could take her on because the only dialogs they have had were with soft ball questioners on Fox News. When they are faced with someone who really knows the facts and can respond in an intelligent manner, they melt like the wicked witch from the East. Marco Rubio looked especially impotent and his aspirations for President took a sharp dip. The most disturbing fact about these "hearings" is that I get to see what nimrods are running my Country.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/kerry-criticizes-johnson-for-missing-benghazi-briefing-fi8gonv-188239491.html