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ICYMI: Kevin McCarthy’s Response to Criticism of His Benghazi Comments: “Stop Playing Politics”

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ICYMI: Kevin McCarthy’s Response to Criticism of His Benghazi Comments: “Stop Playing Politics”

National Journal

By Emma Roller and Eric Garcia

October 7, 2015

McCarthy’s verbal misstep continues to dog him into Thursday’s House speakership vote.

The elec­tion for the next speak­er of the House is sched­uled for Thursday. Rep. Kev­in Mc­Carthy of Cali­for­nia and Rep. Jason Chaf­fetz of Utah are fa­cing off in their bids to re­place Rep. John Boehner as speak­er.

But all re­port­ers wanted to talk to Mc­Carthy about on Wed­nes­day was a com­ment he made last week about the Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Benghazi.

At the GOP lead­er­ship’s weekly press con­fer­ence Wed­nes­day, Boehner ap­proached the mi­cro­phone to take the first ques­tion, only to be asked to step aside so Mc­Carthy could be asked a ques­tion about his re­cent com­ments on the Benghazi com­mit­tee.

“I still find you news­worthy, but I might have to ask for your col­league,” a re­port­er told the out­go­ing Speak­er.

“Wow, just right away,” Boehner said, step­ping aside, as people in the gaggle laughed and groaned.

In an in­ter­view with Fox News last week, Mc­Carthy ap­peared to ad­mit that the Benghazi Com­mit­tee was cre­ated to do polit­ic­al harm to Hil­lary Clin­ton, cit­ing her flag­ging poll num­bers as an ef­fect of the com­mit­tee’s in­vest­ig­a­tion. Clin­ton’s cam­paign quickly cut an ad us­ing Mc­Carthy’s com­ments against him.

Mc­Carthy back­pedaled on those com­ments at the press con­fer­ence Wed­nes­day.

“Let’s be very clear: Benghazi is not polit­ic­al,” Mc­Carthy said. “It was cre­ated for one pur­pose and one pur­pose only: to find the truth on be­half of the fam­il­ies of the four dead Amer­ic­ans. Peri­od.”

“The in­teg­rity of [com­mit­tee chair­man Rep.] Trey Gowdy, the in­teg­rity of the work that has been done has nev­er come in­to ques­tion and it nev­er should be. Stop play­ing polit­ics,” he ad­ded.”

“Did you mis­speak, though, per­son­ally?” a re­port­er fol­lowed up.

Mc­Carthy paused. “I could have been more clear in my de­scrip­tion of what was go­ing for­ward, and I’ve stated that,” he said.

Boehner de­fen­ded Mc­Carthy’s verbal mis­step.

“There’s not one Amer­ic­an who in the course of their life­time wouldn’t rather have the op­por­tun­ity to say words over again,” Boehner said. “Not one Amer­ic­an that hasn’t had this ex­per­i­ence.”

For his part, Mc­Carthy de­fen­ded him­self from ac­cus­a­tions from Chaf­fetz that he would not be the most ef­fect­ive de­liver­er of the Re­pub­lic­an mes­sage.

“Over time we’ll prove that we have a very good mes­sage,” Mc­Carthy said.

An­oth­er re­port­er brought up a 1997 spend­ing pro­vi­sion that bars the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol from study­ing guns as a health is­sue. Asked if his caucus would con­sider tweak­ing that lan­guage, Boehner said “it’s not been part of the dis­cus­sions.”

“My heart goes out to the vic­tims that lost their lives and were in­jured in Ore­gon last week. We’ve seen far too many of these,” Boehner said. “In ’09 and ’10, we had Demo­crat ma­jor­it­ies in the House and Sen­ate, we had a Demo­crat pres­id­ent, and this is clearly not a pri­or­ity for them. But a pres­id­ent can rail all he wants. Let’s talk about what can we do to make sure that people with ser­i­ous men­tal ill­ness don’t have ac­cess to weapons. Let’s quit fight­ing over this and let’s start think­ing about how, what is doable, and what would have an im­pact.”

Later in the con­fer­ence, Boehner was asked to re­spond to Mc­Carthy award­ing him a B-minus grade for his ten­ure as speak­er.

“I think I said something to him about it,” Boehner said with a grin.

Mc­Carthy quickly cut in, fin­ger raised, to de­fend his com­ment.

“You’ve gotta un­der­stand, I think that’s the highest grade I ever got!”





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