The Benghazi scandal represents the largest looming existential threat to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential ambitions.
Adding Secretary of State to her resume was supposed to give Hillary the international gravitas to catapult her into the White House. It’s grim irony that Hillary’s foreign policy reputation would potentially go down in fiery flames on September 11th, 2012 with the destruction of the Benghazi compound and the death of four Americans.
Yes, it could have threatened Pres. Obama’s reelection chances, but Mitt Romney punted on Benghazi in the third Presidential debate and the rest is history.
But Benghazi didn’t go away.
Many Americans were unwilling to let Benghazi be swept under the rug. Over a year later, millions still want to know the truth.
Hillary can’t have that.
Luckily, Hillary has built a contingency to deal with disasters like this; David Brock’s Media Matters for America.
Since the devastating 60 Minutes report on Benghazi a little over a week ago, Media Matters has been on a rampage to cover-up the truth about Benghazi. Here’s the recent front page of MMFA’s site - 8 links out 10 above the fold stories:
I’m going to deal with the substance of their attacks in Part Two.
Why Media Matters Matters
If you’re conservative, libertarian or independent, you probably don’t read Media Matters for America. Don’t make the mistake of assuming that just because you don’t read something, it’s not influential or important.
Their book on Benghazi called The Benghazi Hoax is selling decently on Amazon but that’s not where the group’s impact comes from.
Their real power is their network. Media Matters for America is the research arm of the institutional left. Left bogs and the MSM pick up on their stories. This gives them a huge reach.
Here’s some of the blog echo chamber response on the their 60 Minutes attacks:
It’s no accident Media Matters is hitting this issue so hard.
The Media Matters / Clinton Connection
That isn’t a conservative pundit or right wing blogger asking that question.
It’s Chuck Todd from MSNBC.
Here’s what Todd said in a November, 2007 article entitled Calling out Media Matters’ bias :
Don’t they need to fully disclose their relationship with Hillary Clinton? After all, at the YearlyKos Convention in Chicago on Aug. 4, she touted her involvement with the group…
“I only wish that we had this active and fighting blogosphere about 15 years ago because we have certainly suffered over the last years from a real imbalance in the political world in our country. But we are righting that balance — or lefting that balance — not sure which, and we are certainly better prepared and more focused on taking our arguments and making them effective and disseminating them widely and really putting together a network in the blogosphere in a lot of the new progressive infrastructure — institutions that I helped to start and support like Media Matters and Center for American Progress. We’re beginning to match what I had said for years was the advantage of the other side.”
But don’t take Chuck’s word for it. Here’s the speech by Hillary Clinton; the quote comes about two minutes in.
And as Newsday reported in a 2006 story called Switching allegiances:
David Brock, the reformed right-wing reporter who once took aim at Hillary Rodham Clinton, has cultivated surprisingly deep ties to the senator - paying $200,000 to a Clinton confidant for working at his watchdog group, Media Matters. In the strange-bedfellows world of Washington, few couplings are odder than the Clinton-Brock alliance. The ideological chameleon has emerged as a reliable defender, while she’s quietly nurtured his $8.5-million-a-year nonprofit empire.
….
Clinton’s extended family of contributors, consultants and friends has played a pivotal role in helping Media Matters grow from a $3.5 million start-up in 2004 to its current $8.5 million budget. Two years ago, she advised Brock on creating the group, encouraging the creation of a liberal equivalent of the Media Research Center, a conservative group that has aggravated Democrats for decades.
Seven years later and the bond is stronger than ever. Hillary and Brock have even launched another ‘watchdog’ group. As Politico reported in a story headlined Research shop stocks up on Hillary Clinton aides
The research super PAC American Bridge has made a string of hires from within Clintonland for an offshoot project called “Correct the Record,” an effort whose goal is protecting potential 2016 Democratic candidates - with Hillary Clinton chief among them.
The group, which was launched in the 2012 cycle by Clinton ally and Media Matters founder David Brock, has hired from within Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, and is getting financial support from two longtime Clinton donors, officials with the group told POLITICO.
In Part Two, I’ll look at the MMFA cover-up techniques.
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