It wasn’t easy, but House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was elected to Congress’ top job in January. The California Republican was, however, supposed to claim the speaker’s gavel eight years earlier, when John Boehner stepped down from the post, and McCarthy, as the House majority leader, held the #2 slot in the GOP leadership.
So what happened? McCarthy appeared on Fox News and accidentally told the truth about the political purpose of the House Republicans’ Benghazi committee.
Reflecting on the utility of the panel, the GOP leader boasted, ahead of the 2016 presidential election, “Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable [sic]. But no one would have known any of that had happened, had we not fought.”
House Republicans were not at all pleased that McCarthy had blurted out the truth; there was a rather intense backlash from his ostensible allies; and he soon after was forced to withdraw from consideration as Boehner’s successor. The incident presumably taught GOP members a lesson: If you’re going to launch a congressional investigation for political purposes, don’t give away the game on national television.
It’s a lesson House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer apparently hasn’t learned.
The Kentucky Republican’s hapless crusade against President Joe Biden and his family has, at least so far, failed quite spectacularly, but Comer appeared on Fox News yesterday morning — shortly after 4 a.m. — to suggest that his investigations are making a real difference. Echoing McCarthy’s infamous 2015 quote, the Oversight Committee chair encouraged Fox viewers to simply look at the Democratic president’s poll numbers.
“You look at the polling, and right now Donald Trump is seven points ahead of Joe Biden and trending upward, Joe Biden’s trending downward. And I believe that…
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