The Benghazi Hearing TV Show: Clinton v. Trey Gowdy

There was no lack of drama in the morning session of the House Benghazi committee on Thursday, whose stated purpose is an inquiry into the 2012 attacks that killed four Americans in Libya.

Everyone involved came prepared to play to the TV cameras. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton fended off harsh accusations from committee members, including committee chairman Trey Gowdy and Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan, saying, “I have thought more about what happened than all of you put together; I have lost more sleep than all of you put together.”

Clinton was responding to assertions from some members of the committee that her emails regarding the events of Sept. 11, 2012, contradicted each other about initial reports that a video inspired the attacks rather than a premeditated terrorist attack. Jordan tried to personalize the criticism in phrasing his assertion to Clinton: “You tell your family it’s a terrorist attack, but not the American people.”

There was also a heated exchange that barely involved Clinton, a rancorous dialogue between committee members Gowdy, a Republican, and Rep. Elijah Cummings, a Democrat. The two argued over Gowdy’s lengthy condemnation of Clinton’s friend and former senior advisor Sidney Blumenthal and his influence on Clinton.

On CNN, Jake Tapper made the salient point that both sides were attempting to engineer “a dramatic moment, as in a courtroom drama [movie], in which one side or the other forces the defendant to admit guilt.” (Clearly, nothing of the sort was forthcoming from Clinton.)

Over on MSNBC, Brian Williams made one of his occasional recent TV appearances to lead a panel of contributors in discussing various points of Clinton’s testimony. During the recesses, Fox News frequently went straight to members of Congress for comment; Shepard Smith, referring to the frequently-cited tab this committee was costing the American public, puckishly observed, “For four-and-a-half million dollars, I feel this should come with popcorn.” He added, “If I’m a voter and I tune in to [Gowdy’s shouting match with Cummings], I turn the channel to ESPN, and I don’t even like the Mets.”

Gowdy strayed from any sort of objective language in referring to Blumenthal’s email information as “drivel,” and called the website MediaMatters, a non-profit progressive watchdog site, as “a pseudo-news entity.” Cummings tweaked Gowdy for this obsession and urged that Blumenthal’s emails be put into the public record for all to see. Clinton sat through this squabble with a resigned gaze, one that suggested she may have been thinking some variation of, “Boys will be boys.”

The overarching context of the hearing on Thursday was a TV event that re-framed the purpose of the Benghazi hearing: House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s comment to Fox News two weeks ago that the special committee was put together to defeat Clinton’s Presidential ambitions. (“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee… What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable.”)

CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC went live with all of the testimony on Thursday; for the rest of television, it was The Price Is Right, The Steve Harvey Show, The View, and business as usual.