Poll: 70 Percent of People Think Benghazi is Important, Not Phony

Katie Pavlich | August 09, 2013 7:39 AM

A new Fox News poll published late Thursday shows the vast majority of Americans view Benghazi as serious, not phony as the White House has repeatedly stated.

Benghazi. Snooping on reporters. The IRS and NSA. The White House dismisses them as phony and fake scandals. Americans do not.

A Fox News national poll released Thursday finds that 78 percent of voters think the questions over the administration’s handling of the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi should be taken seriously. Just 17 percent call it a phony scandal.

Voters also view other scandals surrounding Obama's White House as very real.

Meanwhile, 69 percent of voters say the National Security Agency’s electronic surveillance of everyday Americans is serious, while 26 percent call that a fake scandal.

By a margin of 59-31 percent, voters are also more likely to view the seizure of reporters’ phone records by the Justice Department as serious rather than phony.

And while the White House sees a Congressional investigation of the IRS targeting of conservative groups as a “distraction,” 59 percent of voters take it seriously. Some 33 percent agree with the administration that it’s fake.

For more than a week now, President Obama and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney have blamed the bad economy and a lack of progress of distractions and "phony scandals" in a desperate to discredit critics and avoid accountability.