Politics

CNN’s Jake Tapper says Hillary will have to answer for Benghazi

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Brendan Bordelon Contributor
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CNN anchor Jake Tapper said Monday that if or when Hillary Clinton runs for president, “there will have to be some questions answered about [Benghazi].”

Tapper spoke with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Monday about the former Secretary of State’s prospects for the presidency. One of the few mainstream media reporters to challenge the Obama administration’s deflections over the deadly September 2012 attack in Libya, Tapper noted that it won’t be easy for Clinton to shed her Benghazi baggage on her way to the White House:

HEWITT: How in the world does she run with the Benghazi timeline on the Etch-a-Sketch that’s been shaken?

TAPPER: I don’t — obviously she can’t. I mean, if she makes the decision to run, there will have to be — and I’m sure her advisers know this, they are smart people — there will have to be some . . . questions answered about it, if not in one big, long, meaty piece then I think over and over and over again. I think it is something that there are a lot of questions that remain about it. For me specifically, you know my coverage of Benghazi has focused on the State Department’s refusal to take seriously enough the request for added security from diplomatic and security experts on the ground in Libya throughout the year leading up to the Benghazi attack. So there are a lot of questions, and I’m sure if she runs she’ll have to answer them.

Clinton has tried to convince the American people that the Benghazi scandal is a false controversy. Susan Rice, the Obama administration spokesperson on the matter and current national security adviser, used that exact phrase to dismiss a Benghazi question during an interview last month. And Clinton herself cried, “What difference, at this point, does it make?!” during questioning by a Senate committee last January.

Hewitt argued that it will make a difference come 2016. “To me, if you wanna be the Commander-in-Chief, and the one night that you’re in charge in an international crisis in Benghazi and you won’t answer questions about it, I’m gonna keep coming back to it,” he promised.

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