Matthews’ MSNBC Guests Agree: Benghazi Is ‘Weak Ground’ For GOP, Should Focus On IRS Scandal
Reacting to President Barack Obama’s statement on Monday, in which he called the revelation that the State Department altered talking points regarding the attack in Benghazi to remove references to terrorism a “sideshow,” the guests of MSNBC host Chris Matthews said that the president was largely correct. One panel guest called the Benghazi scandal “weak ground” for the Republican Party. In a political context, the guests agreed that the scandal regarding the politicization of requests by conservative groups for tax-exempt status from the Internal Revenue Service will yield the GOP more benefits.
Matthews insisted that the GOP has been frustrated with having to embrace immigration reform and they do not want to be “the gun party.” This, he says, is the reason for the party’s focus on the Benghazi scandal.
Matthews played a clip of the president telling reporters in the East Room of the White House on Monday that his administration could not be complicit in a cover-up of the Benghazi talking points because within a week they had changed the focus of the investigation into the attack.
“What he’s actually talking about is this question which Republicans have never been able to nail down, which is motive,” MSNBC.com editor Richard Wolffe. “Why would the White House want this cover-up?”
Matthews And Wolffe agreed that the point which was established in the 2012 presidential debates, that Obama called the attack on Benghazi an act of terrorism, resolves the issue about the edited talking points.
“The motive question doesn’t stack up to the actual event, and nor does it stack up to the actual reporting – contemporaneously, wide-spread reporting – saying that this event in Benghazi had something to do with Cairo,” Wolffe said referencing the region-wide demonstrations against an anti-Islamic YouTube.
TIME Magazine reporter Aparisim “Bobby” Ghosh agreed that the GOP will find more fertile ground to attack Obama on the IRS scandal rather than the Benghazi controversy.
“I would say, at best, this is very, very weak beer,” Ghosh said. “If this is the issue that the Republicans are looking to use against the president over Benghazi, then they’re on very, very weak ground.”
“If I were in the Republican Party, I’d be paying much more attention to the IRS scandal,” Ghosh concluded.
Matthews said that Ghosh was correct because voters are more concerned with their pocketbook than with Benghazi.
Watch the clip below via MSNBC:
