You know your conspiracy theory is on its last legs when even Fox & Friends deems it too silly to go unquestioned.
On Monday, the morning show hosted cable news all-star Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), for his latest in a long string of attempts to prove that the U.S. government engaged in a massive cover-up of the September 11, 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya. Although hosts Gretchen Carlson, Steve Doocy, and Brian Kilmeade are normally happy to promote a good conspiracy theory — for example, they recently seriously questioned whether or not NBC is replacing Jay Leno on The Tonight Showbecause he made a joke about President Obama — even they’re fed up with Chaffetz’s unsupported claims that “we were certainly misled every step of the way.”
“Are you saying that admirals Pickering and Mullen are complicit because they did the review board?” Kilmeade asked of Chaffetz’s suggestion that the government manipulated the findings of the Accountability Review Board report on the attack. “Are you saying that the CIA is complicit because they allowed their talking points to be edited?”
“What were they trying to cover up?” Doocy asked.
“You had the former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta — who was revered by both sides of the fence — coming out and saying, ‘Hey, we couldn’t have gotten anybody there.’ So you have him on the line. You have former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, President Obama, Admiral Mullen. Would all of these people go to bat just to get President Obama re-elected?” Carlson asked.
Chaffetz failed to offer up much of an answer to any of these questions, instead assuring the hosts that his investigation would eventually uncover all of the answers.
Chaffetz will no doubt continue to travel the cable news circuit warning of a cover-up. But when you’ve even lost Fox & Friends, the game is pretty much over.
Hat-tip: Think Progress
