Appearing as a guest on Friday's New Day, CNN political analyst repeated his claim that Hillary Clinton would "make monkeys" out of the Benghazi committee members as he asserted that "she did" in fact do so. Bernstein also threw out one loaded word after another to negatively characterize the Benghazi committee as "ugly," calling it a "travesty," and using the words "disgraceful" and "demagoguery."
The CNN political analyst lauded Clinton's performance as "really impressive" and avoided using the word "lie" as he conceded that she "bends facts." He further recounted former Bill Clinton White House advisor and CNN political analyst David Gergen's recent assertion that, rather than lying, "she's just careful with the truth."
And even right-leaning guest Matt Lewis of the Daily Caller ended up mostly having positive things to say about Hillary Clinton.
At about 7:30 a.m., when CNN co-host Alisyn Camerota turned to Bernstein for his reaction to Clinton's testimony from yesterday, the CNN political analyst heaped praise on the Democratic presidential candidate as he began:
She did a lot more than run the gambit, she ran the show. And we got a real look at President Hillary Clinton, what President Hillary Clinton would be like. She was in command. She knew the facts as she wanted to recite them. She had real context. She was unflappable. She was competent. She knew the terrain. And that's what we would see in a Clinton presidency.
Bernstein avoided using words like "deceive" or "lie" as he hinted at Clinton's deceptiveness:
But the issue of whether she bends facts, and whether you call that "bending," or sometimes "veering too far from the literal truth," that's going to be an issue in this campaign and continue to be. But she really bought herself an awful lot of room yesterday, and it was really impressive.
Co-host John Berman then turned to conservative guest Lewis, and made it known that he was already aware that his guest, although conservative, nevertheless would be relating a positive reaction to Clinton's performance. Berman:
You know, Matt Lewis, you come at this a little bit from the conservative side. You don't know this, but I kind of stalk you on Twitter. And you had some pretty interesting stuff yesterday. And, in some ways, you go further than Carl. You said, not only did she come out on top in this hearing, you went as far as to say, you know, Hillary Clinton, she has her groove back. You compared it to a karma shift in a playoff game where, all of a sudden, one team starts to run away with it. You say that's what's happening with Hillary Clinton right now.
Lewis asserted that Clinton "hit a home run" in her testimony:
It seems like it, wow, she was struggling so bad this summer, and she seemed very unlikeable. She just did not seem to be rising to the occasion. I think the turning point was actually Kevin McCarthy's Benghazi gaffe. If you look at that as a turning point, ever since then, you have the great debate performance that Hillary had, you had the Joe Biden dropping out, and now this Benghazi, I'll call it a performance,
I mean, look, I think Republicans have some valid points, they just didn't make them very well yesterday. Maybe there's some legal possibilities that, you know, going back, did Hillary perjure herself yesterday? I mean, that's always a potential possibility, but if you look at this from a political optics standpoint, I think she hit a home run yesterday.
Berman then jumped in to emphasize that his conservative guest was praising the Democratic presidential candidate. Berman:
And let me just reiterate for the viewers who didn't get the point: Matt's a conservative commentator, so he's coming at this from that side.
Co-host Camerota turned back to Bernstein as she remarked on Clinton's life being "charmed" in recent weeks:
Carl, you've studied Hillary Clinton. You've written the definitive sort of biography on her. These past two weeks have been a charmed time for her life.
Bernstein aimed more vitriol at the Benghazi committee as he began:
It comes from real work, and it also comes from the real destructiveness of the Republican approach to dealing with Hillary Clinton. This hearing yesterday was a travesty. You'd have to go back in old history to the days of Joe McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee to find the kind of demagoguery, the kind of badgering and hectoring that she underwent yesterday as a result of the excess of the members of that committee. It was ugly. It was disgraceful in terms of what the Congress of the United States ought to be.
The CNN analyst then gave himself credit for predicting that Clinton would "make monkeys" out of the Benghazi committee members:
And she rose above it. You heard me say to you actually, I said she was going to make monkeys out of them. It was predictable, and she did. And she managed in the doing of it to take the facts, bend them just how she wanted them to be interpreted. Are they always literally what we would call the best attainable version of the truth? Perhaps not.
Camerota jumped in to acknowledge his aversion to attaching the word "lie" to Clinton. Camerota:
Isn't another way of saying that, a "lie"?
Bernstein then cited Gergen as he rationalized not characterizing Clinton's deceptions as lying:
No. David Gergen, our colleague here, gave my colleague Bob Woodward a great answer when Bob asked him the other day, in a symposium, "Do you trust her?" And Gergen says, "Well, I don't think that she lies, she's careful with the truth." I think that's, there's a kind of parsing that goes on, but what we saw in the hearing was context. Her enemies have never understood context. Both Hillary and Bill Clinton do. And unless the Republicans come to understand context, she's going to be President of the United States if things keep going like they are.
