Cold, shameful and frankly disgusting. Exactly is playing politics when the State Department along with the White House decided to let perhaps up to 60 people perish in Benghazi, as four people actually did…
Charlie Rangel the Troll:
Charlie Rangel explains how he trolled the Benghazi committee
Veteran Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., raised eyebrows on Thursday when he sat down on the dais in the room where the House Benghazi committee was hearing testimony from Hillary Clinton.
Rangel’s move was curious since he’s not a member of the committee. The Democrat, who is currently the second longest serving member of the House of Representatives, also sat on the Republican side of the dais.
In an interview with Yahoo News on Thursday, Rangel suggested he didn’t feel the need to take the committee seriously. He noted that the hearing was taking place in a room normally used by the powerful Ways and Means Committee. Rangel serves on Ways and Means and was the chairman until 2010, when he stepped down after being censured for ethics violations.
“I sat up there today, and there was some comment made by some members I understood as to why they had to sit on the floor and I was sitting on the dais so-called with the committee … I never gave it any thought. That’s my Ways and Means room. You know?” Rangel explained. “It just makes sense. I went in the door I normally go in, I went in the committee I go in, and I sat in a vacant chair about three seats away from the last member so I wouldn’t get confused with them.”
Many Democrats have described the Republican-led committee as a partisan effort to target Clinton, who is running for president. The committee was established to investigate the 2012 terrorist attacks on the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya. Clinton was secretary of state at the time of the attack.
Rangel described the committee as nakedly “political.”
“I never thought that a committee, Democrat or Republican, would be set up to do political work,” he said.
He argued the use of a committee for partisan purposes could undermine the “credibility of committees in the future.”
“If you lose confidence in the investigative committees in the House, it is sad really,” Rangel said.
Rangel sees the committee as just one way the current crop of Republicans is having a damaging effect. He cited the conservative effort that ousted GOP House Speaker John Boehner earlier this month and the budget battles that have continually created the threat of a government shutdown as other instances where Republicans are causing harm.
“If you take a look at the party, you find people that the more that they demonstrate that they are willing to take down the party, the Congress, the president, and their country, the more popular they are back home,” Rangel said, adding, “They’re competing as to who could be more radical.”
Rangel, who has said his current term will be his last after over four decades in the House, said he’s not happy about the current state of the GOP in Congress even though it’s been plagued by infighting.
“I’m angry because I can’t be happy about what the Republicans are doing because they’re not just doing it to themselves, they’re doing it to the institutions I love,” he explained.
Rangel framed his decision to sit with the Benghazi committee as a mixture of his feeling of ownership over the Ways and Means room and his disrespect for the hearing.
“I’ve been going to that room for 40 years, the same door, walking up the same three steps and finding an empty seat,” he said. “And then people are saying, ‘You sat on the Republican side’ … There’s no Republican side when I go to that room. I mean, when we’re having a hearing, of course, there’s Democrat and Republican, but you’re having a circus.”
Rangel also recalled the fact that Clinton had some early experience with congressional investigations. She was apparently his intern when he was on the House Judiciary Committee that investigated President Richard Nixon in 1974 following the Watergate scandal. According to Rangel, he realized their connection when he visited the White House shortly after Clinton’s husband, President Bill Clinton, was elected. More here.
The Hillary Benghazi After Party at her House:
HILLARY: MY TEAM AND I HAD ‘GREAT’ TIME AT MY HOUSE AFTER BENGHAZI HEARING
Democratic presidential candidate former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that she and her team had a “great” time “eating Indian food, and drinking wine and beer” at her house after her testimony before the Benghazi Select Committee in an interview broadcast on Friday’s “Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC.When asked what she did after the hearing, Hillary said, “Well, I had my whole team come over to my house, and we sat around eating Indian food, and drinking wine and beer. That’s what we did. … We were all talking about sports, TV shows. It was great, just to have that chance to, number one thank them, because they did a terrific job, kind of being there behind me, and getting me ready, and then just talk about what we’re going to do next.”
Hillary added, regarding her testimony, “The point is, what are we going to do both honor the people that we lost, and try to make sure this doesn’t happen again”
