It’s not easy to blame Hillary Clinton for a bomb that came on board a Russian aircraft in Egypt– and work in Benghazi - but Fox News found a way!
CNN reported tonight that U.S. intelligence assessments suggest that someone planted a bomb on the plane before takeoff at Sharm el-Sheikh airport in Egypt and it is believed that whoever was behind it “took advantage of lax security or had someone complicit at the airport.”
But Bill O’Reilly – feigning reluctance to talk about the story – hinted that Republicans should use this incidence against Clinton in the 2016 presidential campaign. He was helped in that effort by Fox News reporter Ed Henry.
“I’ve been staying away from this story because I don’t want to give ISIS any kind of publicity that might help this terror group,” O’Reilly said during a discussion with Henry.
But on Fox, smearing Clinton trumps national security concerns!
O’REILLY: But it now appears that someone planted a bomb on that Russian airliner that crashed in Egypt. We’re gonna have a big report on it tomorrow when we can assemble some facts but it appears that this is it.
As you know, ISIS rose under the tenure of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. CNN did not ask her any questions about ISIS but now, if this is true, if ISIS is bombing airliners out of the sky, this has become a pretty big deal for Hillary Clinton and for President Obama, who totally botched the ISIS campaign.
Predictably, nobody mentioned the role of the Bush/Cheney administration in spawning ISIS with the unnecessary invasion of Iraq. I’m sure Fox would blame that on Clinton and Obama, too, if they could. But the 2016 campaign is still young so it could yet happen!
HENRY: Yes, ‘cause number one, as I just said, she wants to run, in part, on her resumé. She’s got experience. Well, let’s dig into her time at the State Department and if the president, not Hillary Clinton but the president, that she served under was saying ISIS was a JV squad, guess what? That was completely and utterly wrong.
Number two, let’s remember what came up in that Benghazi testimony a couple of weeks ago where she got widely credited for doing well. There were moments where the narrative that she told the American people was wrong. She got hit on that pretty hard. Why was the administration trying so hard after the Benghazi terror attacks to say that this was not terror? Well, because they were in the middle of a presidential campaign and it’s widely believed –
Even O’Reilly didn’t want to hear about Benghazi. “You know what? Voters don’t care about that any more, Ed,” O’Reilly interrupted. “They don’t.”
But Henry was not to be deterred on his Benghazification to go with O'Reilly's Clintonization of the airplane crash.
HENRY: But they didn’t want to admit that Al Qaeda – you’ll remember, the president was saying Al Qaeda was on the run.
…Al Qaeda was not on the run then and guess what? As you’re saying, ISIS not on the run. They might be blowing up airlines, we don’t know, but they might be.
Then O’Reilly dropped his hint for Republican candidates: “The ISIS thing might come back in this campaign. Whoever the Republican nominee is could make a big deal out of it.”
Believe me, if O’Reilly and/or Fox thinks it will help the GOP, the “fair and balanced” network will milk it as much as possible on the candidates’ behalf.
Watch it above, from the November 4 The O’Reilly Factor.
Crossposted at News Hounds.
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