On Friday’s NBC Today, hosts and correspondents hoped Hillary Clinton had brushed aside her scandals after testimony before the House Benghazi Committee on Thursday. At the top of the show, co-host Savannah Guthrie proclaimed: “Marathon on the Hill....an 11-hour day on Benghazi....Has Hillary Clinton put the controversy behind her?”
In the report that followed, correspondent Andrea Mitchell dismissed the hearing as “plenty of political theater” and sympathetically declared: “It was Clinton who spent the most time talking about the victims of the attack.” She concluded that while the former Secretary of State “was praised for keeping her cool,” Democrats on the committee “were out of patience.”
Minutes later, Guthrie turned to MSNBC contributor Nicolle Wallace and wondered: “[Clinton] was fairly unflappable in contrast to the last time she testified where she got very angry and said, ‘What difference does it make?’ So bottom line, did the Republicans lay a glove on her?”
Wallace proclaimed: “The truth is, and what Republicans need to process now, is that she has not only survived all of those pretty big tests, she has proven herself an incredibly disciplined, an incredibly tranquil, and a formidable presidential candidate.”
On Thursday’s Today, Guthrie preemptively declared that the committee had “disqualified themselves.”
On Friday, fill-in co-host Carson Daly followed up by turning to MSNBC host Steve Kornacki and reiterated the idea that Clinton had moved past her scandals: “Did she do enough in the hearing to finally get this e-mail issue behind her?”
Kornacki replied: “I think so and I think the thing we have to keep in mind here is she walked into this with a slight advantage, and that’s because of all the comments by several Republicans over the last few weeks that really made this look like a political inquisition more than a fact-finding venture.”
Moments later, Kornacki added: “I think the Republicans needed to produce some sort of new information, some sort of new revelation, some sort of new way of looking at this that would cast doubt on the role that Hillary Clinton played. I didn't hear that come out yesterday.”
NBC actually censored a key revelation presented by Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan during the hearing – that Clinton acknowledged Benghazi was a planned terrorist attack in private e-mails, but claimed in public that it was simply a spontaneous protest that turned violent.
Here is a full transcript of the October 23 discussion with Wallace and Kornacki:
7:11 AM ET
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: Let's turn to Nicolle Wallace, an MSNBC analyst and former White House communications director for President George W. Bush, and Steve Kornacki, MSNBC host and political correspondent. Good morning to all of you.
NICOLLE WALLACE: Good morning, guys.
CARSON DALY: Good morning, guys.
[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Clinton Grilled in Marathon Hearing; Did Benghazi Testimony Help or Hurt Campaign?]
GUTHRIE: I know we were all rapt watching 11 hours of testimony yesterday. I mean, this was the climatic moment, Nicolle. This is what the Republicans on that committee had been waiting for. She was fairly unflappable in contrast to the last time she testified where she got very angry and said, “What difference does it make?” So bottom line, did the Republicans lay a glove on her?
WALLACE: Well, listen. I think if you have to take her fall in its entirety. And I imagine her in August sort of looking at these things on her fall calendar, “Oh, waiting for Joe Biden to decide, my first debate next to surging Bernie Sanders and this Benghazi hearing,” and sort of had a Calgon “take me away” moment. The truth is, and what Republicans need to process now, is that she has not only survived all of those pretty big tests, she has proven herself an incredibly disciplined, an incredibly tranquil, and a formidable presidential candidate.
CARSON DALY: Yeah, Steve, as Nicolle said, this was a benchmark certainly on her calendar in the fall, getting past – doing well in that first debate, VP now out of the race. Did she do enough in the hearing to finally get this e-mail issue behind her?
STEVE KORNACKI: I think so and I think the thing we have to keep in mind here is she walked into this with a slight advantage, and that’s because of all the comments by several Republicans over the last few weeks that really made this look like a political inquisition more than a fact-finding venture. So I think in that setting she needed to could go in there and not have one of those moments where she says, “What difference does it make?”
And I think one thing that we were reminded of yesterday is in these settings, sort of adversarial settings, a debate, a hearing, something like that, Hillary Clinton really is quite good. I was thinking back to the 2008 campaign. She had 25 debates or something against Barack Obama. I know she lost that race to Barack Obama, but when you think back to those debates, she won just about every one of them. The thing that has always been the problem for her is when she has that one moment where she trips up, it becomes big and there was no big moment where she tripped up yesterday.
GUTHRIE: Let's pretend this person exists in the world – they’re neutral, they have no preconceived political positions, they wanted to go into this hearing and learn something about Benghazi and who was to blame. What do we take away from this hearing?
KORNACKI: And I think that's the thing. I think the Republicans needed to produce some sort of new information, some sort of new revelation, some sort of new way of looking at this that would cast doubt on the role that Hillary Clinton played. I didn't hear that come out yesterday. The one problem, though, that Hillary Clinton still has, I think, is while you look at these polls and people say, “Hey, I'm tired of hearing about the e-mails, I think she only did this for convenience,” if you ask people, do you think she's being honest about the e-mails? They still say no. So that issue of honesty still lingers for her.
WALLACE: And Savannah, it's important to remember that there is still an FBI investigation into her e-mail server. And the big accomplishment of Trey Gowdy's Benghazi Committee remains that they were the ones that discovered that she conducted all of her official State Department business on a home e-mail server. So the FBI is still investigating and public, by and large, even people who like and support her, still think she has a squirrely relationship with the truth.
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