The GOP outrage police who demanded answers after Benghazi are showing ‘rank hypocrisy’ over Jan. 6: journalist
After terrorists attacked the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya in 2012 on the 11th anniversary of 9/11, Republicans in Congress and their propagandists in the right-wing media demanded accountability. Benghazi received nonstop coverage from the “outrage police” of Fox News and AM talk radio. But Washington Post opinion writer Dana Milbank, in his December 15 column, slams MAGA Republicans for their blatant hypocrisy — stressing that Republicans who were so outraged over Benghazi aren’t demanding answers for the January 6 insurrection.
“On September 11, 2012, terrorists attacked the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya,” Milbank explains. “Four Americans died. On January 6, 2021, terrorists attacked the U.S. Capitol. Five people died during the attack and its immediate aftermath, including a police officer. Four more officers died by suicide in the following months. Another 140 police were injured. The differing responses to the two tragedies show the rank hypocrisy in the Republican Party and the sickness that has taken hold of it.”
A minority of right-wing Republicans have been very outspoken about the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol Building and have been highly critical of former President Donald Trump, including Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois — all of whom MAGA Republicans now despise and slam as RINOs: Republicans In Name Only. Cheney and Kinzinger, in fact, are members of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s select committee on January 6. And Cheney has had a lot to say recently about the texts that pro-Trump Republicans sent during the Capitol siege.
“Now we know, thanks to the text messages of former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, that while domestic terrorists were sacking the Capitol and legislators hid in fear for their lives, several Republican lawmakers, Fox News personalities and Donald Trump, Jr. reached out to Meadows to urge President Donald Trump to call off the attack,” Milbank observes. “Trump refused for hours, and his Pentagon stalled on an urgent plea to deploy the National Guard to defend the Capitol. Essentially, Trump did just what Republicans falsely accused (former Secretary of State Hillary) Clinton of doing in Benghazi. And attacking the U.S. seat of government is orders of magnitude worse than attacking a diplomatic outpost.”
Milbank cites Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, both Trump loyalists, as examples of far-right Republicans who demanded answers after the Benghazi attack but haven’t had that level of outrage over January 6.
“Jordan, in his addendum to the Benghazi report, wrote that the Obama Administration, ‘so blinded by politics and its desire to win an election, disregarded a basic duty of government: Tell the people the truth,” Milbank writes. “Five years later, with democracy itself on the line, Jordan and his colleagues are fighting the truth as if their very survival depends on it.”
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