Kevin McCarthy lets GOP's Benghazi mask slip: It's all about derailing Hillary Clinton

Remember when Benghazi was a "serious investigation"?

By Sophia Tesfaye

Senior Politics Editor

Published September 30, 2015 2:36PM (EDT)

  (AP/Molly Riley)
(AP/Molly Riley)

The man set to take the job as the top Republican in the House just made a crucial admission about the true nature of the wild goose-chase known as the House Select Committee on Benghazi -- its aim is to take down Hillary Clinton.

While the revelation may come as no surprise, its source should. Outgoing House Speaker John Boehner recently warned his party of "false prophets" and after Fox News' Sean Hannity worried he'd been wrongly labeled as such, he somehow elicited a confession from Boehner's would-be successor that is heresy to right-wing orthodoxy on Benghazi.

"Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?" House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy offered as "one example" of a Republican win in Congress. "But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today?" the California Republican asked. "Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she's untrustable."

McCarthy, who recently announced his intentions to run for Speaker of the House, then made this clear admission in an attempt to spike the football: "But no one would have known any of that had happened, had we not fought."

"I give you credit for that," Hannity conceded. "I'll give you credit where credit is due," the one-time conductor of the "Stop Hillary Express" offered.

Only on his second day of publicly lobbying for the job, the number two Republican in the House was forced to so extremely kow-tow to the extreme factions of his base, withering under the questioning of Hannity, that he admitted that the longest special congressional investigation in U.S. history is all a political charade.

So much for Boehner's claims about this being "a serious investigation."

Watch McCarthy admit to Sean Hannity that the Benghazi investigation is just a ruse to derail Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign:

State Department To Hand Over New Clinton Emails On Benghazi


By Sophia Tesfaye

Sophia Tesfaye is Salon's senior editor for news and politics, and resides in Washington, D.C. You can find her on Twitter at @SophiaTesfaye.

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