Wednesday on Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough finally got mad over the report released by the Select Committee on Benghazi. The report outlined the colossal failure of Hillary Clinton’s State Department for the death of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, in September 2012. Even Jon Meacham joined in the angry chorus as the two vehemently disagreed with Hillary Clinton’s position that “it’s time to move on.” According to Scarborough, Clinton “got it completely wrong.”
HILLARY CLINTON: After more than two years and $7 million spent by the Benghazi Committee out of taxpayer funds, it had to, today, report it had found nothing, nothing to contradict the conclusions of the independent accountability board. I will leave it to others to characterize this report, but I think it's pretty clear, it's time to move on.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: …You know, Jon Meacham, this is the Clinton’s, this is the oldest trick in the book for the Clintons. Oh, we've had this many investigations and this money's been spent. Let's move on.
Scarborough went on to not only condemn the former Secretary of State, but the equally responsible and reprehensible Obama Administration:
SCARBOROUGH: What the hell was going on in the White house?
MEACHAM: Right.
SCARBOROUGH: What the hell was going on -- why were they sitting there talking about uniforms like why were they sitting there talking about YouTube videos. Why were they doing all of these—this, this wasn't some criminal conspiracy, this was just bureaucratic bungling that killed four Americans.
Much to the satisfaction of Hillary Clinton, these questions continue to go unanswered. Not only was it out of character for Scarborough to fire off such disdain for Clinton, but it was also unlike the Executive Editor at Random House, Jon Meacham, to deviate from the MSNBC standard:
MEACHAM: …And the idea that we should move on actually is wrong. Because if we don't study 9/11. If we don't study moments like Benghazi, everything we have been talking about this morning suggests that all we’re going to do is have episode after episode after episode of crisis management. And so if you don't learn from past crises, then you're not going to get it better. You're not going to get better at running them. And I think that you're right about the Clinton modus operandi, but it seems to me that the responsible thing to say is this is an important case study, we’re going to learn from it in order to keep people alive in the future.
It looks as though, even for just a day, MSNBC journalists have grown tired of Clinton perpetually downplaying what happened in Benghazi. As Meacham noted, understanding the minute details of the report and exactly what went wrong in Benghazi is fundamental to the future of our national security.
Scarborough has a history of going easy on Clinton, so it will be interesting to see if this marks a change.
View Full Transcript Here:
06-29-16 MSNBC – Morning Joe
07:45:41 AM – 7:48:17 AM[Video from Hillary Clinton in Denver, CO 6/28/16]
HILLARY CLINTON: After more than two years and $7 million spent by the Benghazi Committee out of taxpayer funds, it had to, today, report it had found nothing, nothing to contradict the conclusions of the independent accountability board. I will leave it to others to characterize this report, but I think it's pretty clear, it's time to move on.
[End of video]
JOE SCARBOROUGH: You know, Jon Meacham, this is the Clinton’s, this is the oldest trick in the book for the Clintons. Oh, we've had this many investigations and this money's been spent. Let's move on. I think Republicans who have politicized this too much from the day of the attack and the day after the attack when Mitt Romney held a press conference before we knew anything that was going on. And I criticized him in real time.
JON MEACHAM: Yep.
SCARBOROUGH: This is the first time I've seen anything that makes me think, wait a second.
MEACHAM: Yep.
SCARBOROUGH: We actually need to talk about this more and have, have agencies and leaders talking to each other after we did after the desert debacle in 1980.
MEACHAM: That's exactly it.
SCARBOROUGH: And figure out how we make sure this never happens again. I think she's got it completely wrong. This is the first time I've said, wait a second.
MEACHAM: Right.
SCARBOROUGH: What the hell was going on in the White house?
MEACHAM: Right.
SCARBOROUGH: What the hell was going on -- why were they sitting there talking about uniforms like why were they sitting there talking about YouTube videos. Why were they doing all of these—this, this wasn't some criminal conspiracy, this was just bureaucratic bungling that killed four Americans.
MEACHAM: And that's the key point I think. And the idea that we should move on actually is wrong. Because if we don't study 9/11. If we don't study moments like Benghazi, everything we have been talking about this morning suggests that all we’re going to do is have episode after episode after episode of crisis management. And so if you don't learn from past crises, then you're not going to get it better. You're not going to get better at running them. And I think that you're right about the Clinton modus operandi, but it seems to me that the responsible thing to say is this is an important case study, we’re going to learn from it in order to keep people alive in the future.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Rapid response.
SCARBOROUGH: We, we, we learn from the tragedy in the desert in 1980. That special forces was developed in a way to make sure that would never happen, again. We need to make sure that this never happens again.
