Congressional Republicans were flabbergasted by President Obama’s assertion in a post-State of the Union Google hangout that the Benghazi attack does not signify a lack of administration transparency.
Obama was asked in the Thursday “fireside hangout” about how “recent leaked guidelines regarding drone strikes on American citizens and Benghazi and closed door hearings on the budget and deficit” were diminishing his claims of being square with the American people.
“This is the most transparent administration in history,” the president said. “…There are a handful of issues, mostly around national security, where people have legitimate questions, where there is still concern about whether or not we have all the information we need.”
“Benghazi, by the way, is not a good example of that,” Obama continued. “That was largely driven by campaign stuff because everything about that, we’ve had more testimony and more paper provided to Congress than ever before. And Congress is sort of running out of things to ask.”
On Fox last night, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) noted Obama’s assertion “that Congress is really running out of questions and they’ve been the most transparent administration in history about Benghazi.”
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” Graham said. “Apparently, he can say anything he wants to say. The media doesn’t get upset unless they won’t give them a photo with — you know, let him — he and Tiger Woods’s golf game.”
“I do know that there’s so many answers we don’t know,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “For example, what did the President do the night of the attack? We know him with the Secretary of Defense and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff on another issue and they were talking to them you never talked to them again.”
“We have had two movies about getting bin Laden and we don’t even know who the people were who were evacuated from the consulate the next day after the attack. So, there are many, many questions. We have had a massive cover-up,” he said.
When host David Gregory interjected, asking “a massive cover up of what,” McCain shot back, “Do you care, David?”
“I’m asking you, do you care whether four Americans died? The reasons for that? And shouldn’t people be held accountable for the fact that four Americans died?”
Gregory didn’t answer the question.
“We had people out there dying, and people that he committed there, that he sent there, and they — there were no phone calls either way. It’s absolutely incredible,” Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said Monday on Fox.
“Maybe they were using the ostrich pillow. I don’t know,” Gohmert continued. “But something worked to allow them to sleep. Now I do know he had a very busy campaign appearance the next day in Las Vegas. I’m sure he wanted to look good for that, for heaven’s sake.”
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