Hillary Clinton Treats John McCain With Exactly the Respect He Deserves

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


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.

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate