By now, the readers of Townhall.com know the tragic story of Benghazi well, and they know Hillary Clinton’s now infamous response even better: “With all due respect, the fact is we had 4 dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they’d go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?” said Clinton to GOP Sen. Ron Johnson (Wis.) during her congressional testimony in January 2013.
This came at a time when many Americans were learning for the very first time about Clinton’s tragic conversations with the surviving family members of the Benghazi attack victims. As Patricia Smith—the mother of Sean Smith, one of the victims—recounted at the Republican National Convention just weeks ago, “When I saw Hillary Clinton at Sean’s coffin ceremony, just days [after the attack], [Clinton] looked me squarely in the eye and told me a video was responsible.”
Charles Woods, father of Benghazi victim and Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods, says a very similar thing happened to him at the coffin ceremony, something he claims to have written down in a journal right after it happened: “I gave Hillary a hug and shook her hand, and she said we are going to have the film maker arrested who was responsible for the death of my son,” Woods
Of course, we, including the Benghazi family members, all know now Clinton was lying. She knew the YouTube video wasn’t to blame; she told her own daughter as much, as well as foreign leaders, just prior to lying to these family members. We also know she then worked diligently to cover all of this up—first to protect President Barack Obama, who was at the time in a hotly contested Race with Mitt Romney, and then to save her own political career. Thousands of e-mails were deleted, lies were told, and the rest is history.
It was hard to imagine at the time the testimony was given that Clinton could say or do anything much worse than tell the world, “What difference does it make?” She was caught red-handed in a cover-up of epic proportions, a claim confirmed by FBI James Comey, and rather than simply admitting she was, at the very least, partly responsible, Clinton did what she and her husband do best: deny, deny, deny.
The denying continues today, in fact. Clinton is still insisting the Benghazi families are not telling the truth about what she said to them at the casket ceremony, and Clinton refuses to admit she intentionally did anything wrong. Even leftwing Washington Post is now saying Clinton has been lying, at least in part, about the results of the Benghazi investigation; it recently gave Clinton “four Pinocchios” for not telling the truth about Comey’s Benghazi findings.
It has long been thought amongst conservatives, even before the very controversial Donald Trump won the Republican nomination, that any GOP candidate fighting against Hillary Clinton would have the edge because of the truly abhorrent way she has handled the events that occurred at Benghazi. What could be worse than failing to provide proper security, engaging in a massive cover-up to win an election, being careless with national security secrets and private information, lying to Congress, lying to the American people, and lying to the Benghazi family members?
Even with all of Trump’s faults, many have thought he’d still be able to stand on the debate stage and seize the moral and political high ground. The October campaign commercials alone should, theoretically, be enough to destroy Clinton, no matter how foolish Trump behaves or how reckless his comments at one time or another might be.
But now, many, myself included, are starting to believe the mainstream media—which, make no mistake about it, desperately wants Clinton to win—may have stumbled upon the one thing worse than all of Clinton’s lying, the cover-up, the selfishness, and the incompetence: having a totally unstable, reckless person one button-click away from nuclear war.
No matter how awful Hillary Clinton is, few Americans believe she’s insane. Calculated, cold-hearted, awful in every way, yes, but not insane. If the media can characterize Trump as mentally unhinged enough to actually kill tens of thousands or even millions of people, Trump could be destroyed—regardless of how well he beats down Clinton throughout the remaining days of this election.
Up until this point, this task has proven difficult for the media to accomplish. After all, the media might be able to convince millions of Americans Trump is insensitive, is a bully, and maybe even that he’s racist, bigoted, and/or misogynistic, but how can they make the argument this very successful businessman is totally unhinged and dangerous? I didn’t think it would be possible to accomplish amongst those who fall outside of the leftist wing, which already had no interest in voting for Trump.
Then, it happened. On Wednesday, the media, led by MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, started to report that months ago, during a private meeting with foreign policy experts, Trump repeatedly asked why nuclear weapons couldn’t or shouldn’t be used in foreign conflicts.
According to Scarborough, “Several months ago, a foreign policy expert on the international level went to advise Donald Trump, and three times he asked about the use of nuclear weapons,” Scarborough said. “Three times, he asked, at one point, ‘If we have them, we can’t we use them?’ That’s one of the reasons why he, he just doesn’t have foreign policy experts around him.”
The media took the story and ran with it, insisting for much of the day yesterday Trump is so crazy, he might actually use nuclear weapons against others. He might destroy the world. We might all be thrust into total war.
If Trump is going to have any chance of success, he needs to kill this narrative, and he needs to kill it quickly. If he fails, I’m not sure there is any recovering from it. It’s one thing to say things that are perceived to be outlandish; it’s quite another to be a candidate people are genuinely scared to have in office.
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