Susan Rice, Who Spread Benghazi Lies, Calls Lindsey Graham 'a Piece of S***'
In 2012, right after the Benghazi terrorist attack, then-U.N Ambassador Susan Rice was one of the Obama administration’s point-people for explaining what was behind the assault.
She was out on every show she could be, telling America and the world that the strike on the U.S. diplomatic post in Libya’s second-most populous city wasn’t a coordinated terrorist action but in fact a spontaneous reaction to a badly produced YouTube video.
I bring up the unfortunate specter of that incident, which claimed the lives of four Americans, not because Rice’s television appearances matter much now. After all: What difference, at this point, does it make?
Instead, I bring it up because Rice is now out there calling Sen. Lindsey Graham a “piece of s—.”
Furthermore, the South Carolina Republican didn’t just recently come by this status, but instead earned it because of his take on … Benghazi.
Rice made the statement this week on “Pod Save America,” the podcast that Americans tune into if and when they want to hear establishmentarian liberals saying things they would have thought twice about in other milieux.
For the unfamiliar, “Pod Save America” is a forum hosted by a retinue of former Obama staffers; it’s a cozy thought refuge that views the events of the day through the lens of Nov. 7, 2016, when it was widely assumed the previous administration’s policies and outlook would be continued without visible end.
I don’t need to explain that Graham isn’t particularly popular among this set, but it’s not just because Graham 2.0, as we’re fond of calling him, has finally found some spine.
Rather, one assumes it’s because of the fact that Graham was one of the most vociferous critics of the Obama administration for its handling of Benghazi.
During Rice’s interview on the show, the terror attack apparently came up — if just because, as co-host and former deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said, “You have to understand Benghazi to understand [President] Trump.”
“Right, because Lindsey Graham isn’t just a piece of s— now,” former adviser Tommy Vietor said.
“He’s been a piece of s—,” Rice said. “I said it, I said it, da– it. Finally. He’s a piece of s—.”
Here’s the video, which contains the unbleeped swearing. Viewer discretion is advised:
“He’s a piece of shit.” — @AmbassadorRice on Lindsey Graham
Hear the rest of her interview on tomorrow’s #PodSaveTheWorld pic.twitter.com/9GQITwlSlg
— Pod Save America (@PodSaveAmerica) October 22, 2019
Vietor went on to say that Graham was “lying, lying, lying. And raising money off of the death of four Americans.”
It’s good to know Vietor now cares about when people are “lying” about Benghazi, considering the fact the woman sitting across from him certainly didn’t object to it.
In fact, one of the people on “Pod Save America” was involved in shepherding the Obama administration’s biggest lies about the attack.
According to Investors Business Daily, Rhodes was the one who sent out an infamous email on Friday, Sept. 14, 2012, titled “RE: PREP Call with Susan: Saturday at 4:00 p.m. ET.” This call was a day before Rice’s appearances on Sunday chat shows during which she blamed the attack on the video “Innocence of Muslims.”
In the email, Rhodes wrote that Rice needed “to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure or policy.”
However, according to Investor’s Business Daily, documents released in 2014 included “a Sept. 12, 2012, email from Payton Knopf, a former deputy spokesman at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, in which Knopf informs Rice that senior officials had already dubbed the Benghazi attack ‘complex’ and planned in advance. Yet Rice would still insist on her TV tour that the Benghazi terrorist attacks were ‘spontaneous.’
“In early April, former deputy CIA director Michael Morell, who was heavily involved in editing the now infamous talking points, told lawmakers it was Rice, on the Sunday shows, who linked the video to the Benghazi attack and that the video was not part of the CIA analysis,” Investor’s Business Daily reported.
So apparently, Graham was the “piece of s—” in part because he pointed out that Rice blamed an incoherent and inchoate video with shaking scenery and “MST3K”-worthy acting for the Benghazi attack when she almost certainly knew from the beginning it probably had little if anything to do with it.
Responding to Rice’s remarks in an appearance on Fox News on Wednesday, Graham told Sean Hannity “judge me by my enemies.”
“I’ll take that all day long,” he said.
In short, he’s calling for summary judgment. Given their history, I’d come down on Graham’s side.
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