Hillary Clinton Treats John McCain With Exactly the Respect He Deserves

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Dave Weigel describes the GOP approach to Hillary Clinton’s long-awaited testimony on the Benghazi attacks:

Watching it, I’m struck by the division between two kinds of Republicans. Group One has questions about the timing of the Benghazi attack, what the State Department could have done to prevent it, what it can do now. Group Two wants the truth, damn it, about the talking points that Susan Rice used on the Sunday shows after the attacks.

Group One basically consisted of Marco Rubio. Group Two was everybody else.

I only watched a few bits and pieces of the testimony, and I missed Rubio. All I saw was Rand Paul grandstanding about how he would have fired Hillary, Ron Johnson being an obvious idiot, and John McCain practicing his glower. All together, I didn’t hear a single question that wasn’t a transparent partisan attack. Apparently Republican senators are still consumed with rage that their concocted stories about Susan Rice somehow failed to resonate with the public and produce an epic defeat for Barack Obama in November. They’re simply unable to get over the fact that their fabricated conspiracy theories, which usually do so well when they’re amplified by Fox and Drudge, accomplished nothing more than preventing Rice from becoming Hillary Clinton’s successor.

In any case, my favorite part of the testimony was Hillary Clinton’s posture toward the end, when she was taking questions from McCain and Rand Paul. It’s about what they deserved.

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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