Last night at the RNC Convention in Cleveland, Trump's running mate Gov. Mike Pence uttered words that he claims Hillary Clinton said in a Benghazi hearing which made her look like she didn't care at all about the four Americans that died in the Benghazi attack.
Gov. Pence said, "And it was Hillary Clinton who left Americans in harm’s way in Benghazi and after four Americans fell said, what difference at this point does it make?"
Wow, this makes her be the heartless and cold calculating candidate they've always said she is and appear all the more "guilty" in the eyes of the Republican attendees and those tuning in.
If Hillary actually did say those words in the context Gov. Pence used, they would be a damning piece of evidence, but they were completely taken out of context.
Sen. Ron Johnson used those words to try and help himself in his reelection bid, but was quickly debunked by The Intercept.
And it's the same trick that was done by the RNC in 2004, when they edited John Kerry's words to suit their purposes and smear Kerry.
An RNC video claimed John Kerry was the 'anti-war candidate."
MATHEWS:...are you going to get him to stop saying that John Kerry declared himself the anti-war candidate, which is clearly not what he said because I used the word "anti-war candidate" and I referred to a number of them? You say what he said on my show and he didn't say that. That's all I'm asking.
MATTHEWS [After playing the clip from the RNC video of Kerry on the January 6 edition of Hardball, which cuts off Kerry]: [Y]ou're not letting them judge it for themselves because you cut off the tape. So it only showed the first part of the sentence so they wouldn't get to judge it for themselves, right?
I remember after Chris Mathews vilified Republicans for using his show to lie about the Democratic nominee, Republicans then started a soft boycott of his show.
Smearing a candidate by selectively editing a video is something Republicans know about all too well.
For the most part, Trump's convention has been an extended version of his campaign style, which is to say, it was an attack ad from pillar to post.
They told the media there were themes to be highlighted each night, "Make America Safe, Make America Work, etc, but that never materialized. Instead the RNC Convention became a kangaroo court that decided to imprison the Democratic nominee for having policy disagreements with the GOP.
It's been mean, nasty and dangerous.
Day three is supposed to be when the big boys or girls show up on stage and make their case for their presumptive nominee. And the vice presidential pick is the key note speaker of the night.
Gov. Mike Pence gave a generic speech, hitting all the right points to support Trump, but he followed suit with what had transpired on the RNC stage before him and selectively edited Hillary Clinton's words to make her be the "bit*h" that is personally responsible for those four deaths.
In the above video, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell highlighted this point past night and played the actual exchange between Sen. Ron Johnson and SOS Hillary Clinton, and what she actually said was much different than how Gov. Pence described it.
Johnson: … we were misled that there were supposedly protests and that something sprang out of that — an assault sprang out of that — and that was easily ascertained that that was not the fact, and the American people could have known that within days, and they didn’t know that.
Clinton: With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided that they’d they go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, senator. Now, honestly, I will do my best to answer your questions about this, but the fact is that people were trying in real time to get to the best information. The IC has a process, I understand, going with the other committees to explain how these talking points came out. But you know, to be clear, it is, from my perspective, less important today looking backwards as to why these militants decided they did it than to find them and bring them to justice, and then maybe we’ll figure out what was going on in the meantime.
Hillary Clinton clearly was saying that it didn't matter if Susan Rice's talking points about the cause of the attack were wrong because they wouldn't have changed the fact that four Americans were killed and we must make sure that never happens again. Clearly her remarks were the opposite of what Gov. Pence told the RNC crowd last night.
It's similar to Republicans saying President Obama is aiding an abetting ISIS because he won't use their pet phrase to describe them.
It's dishonest and despicable.
