Libya: Fox News Analyst Slams ‘Deliberate’ ‘False’ GOP Attacks On Obama
Juan Williams, a Fox News analyst, today published an op-ed at The Hill that slams the GOP’s “false narratives,” “hypocrisy,” and “deliberate misinformation about the Benghazi assault.”
Williams, who often appears on Fox for what they consider a “liberal” point of view — although his points of view generally are far from progressive — is an an Emmy Award winning journalist. Today he writes stating he wants to “make three corrections to the record about the campaign’s most controversial foreign policy topic: the murder of the U.S. Ambassador to Libya.”
The first correction is to the charge that U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice lied to the American people in the days after the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi.
Rice told television interviewers the violence grew out of a spontaneous demonstration, prompted by an American anti-Muslim video.
Here is the simple fact: The Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper has confirmed that Rice told the truth in describing the assessment of the intelligence community at the time of her remarks.
She was not the only one relying on those initial intelligence reports.Two days after the attack, CIA Director David Petraeus briefed the House Intelligence Committee. Petraeus told lawmakers the best intelligence showed it was a demonstration sparked by the video that got out of hand, according to Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (Md.), the panel’s ranking Democrat.
…
The spin-free truth is that Rice accurately stated what U.S. intelligence showed at the time, and stressed that there was an ongoing investigation where conclusions were subject to change.
Now for the second correction.
It is being charged that requests for extra security in Benghazi were denied by the administration.
The suggestion is that the attack would have been stopped, and the ambassador still alive, if the requests had been granted.
But at a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee this month, Charlene Lamb, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and head of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, testified that the request was for added security in Tripoli, the capital of Libya, and not Benghazi.
The added manpower would have been based 400 miles away from the violence.
In addition, U.S. security officials report more guards could not have repelled heavy weapons used by the attackers.
The Wall Street Journal has reported “a four-man team of armed guards protecting the perimeter and four unarmed Libyan guards inside to screen visitors.â€
In addition, “Besides the four armed Libyans outside, five armed State Department diplomatic security officers were at the consulate.â€
There is an air of hypocrisy about this second charge from Republican critics.
House Republicans voted to cut nearly $300 million in funding from Embassy Security as part of their most recent budget.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) conceded this in a CNN interview.
“Absolutely. Look, we have to make priorities and choices in this country… When you’re in tough economic times, you have to make difficult choices how to prioritize this.â€
The third and final correction comes in response to the charge that the attack on Benghazi is evidence that al Qaeda is resurgent.
The Romney campaign argues that, notwithstanding the Obama administration’s claims, the threat from al Qaeda has not significantly diminished despite the death of Osama bin Laden.
The reality is that missions authorized by the Obama administration have killed the top commanders of the terrorist group, including bin Laden.
In addition, President Obama’s drone strikes targeting al Qaeda members have decimated the remaining members of the group.
Tommy Vietor, a National Secretary Council spokesman, explains the impact.
“Our assessment that we have decimated al Qaeda leadership is unchanged. Dozens of their senior leadership have been taken off the battlefield as a result of the president’s anti-terror policies,†Vietor said.
“We know affiliates like al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula will seek to target us and that’s why we go after them relentlessly.”
This is a key point.
Tonight, Mitt Romney will lie like a rug about Libya and the President’s foreign policy.
Remember, Romney lied 27 times in the first presidential debate on October 3. Romney then lied in his so-called “foreign policy†speech on October 8, big time, and we captured this Fox News article that proves it. Then, in the second presidential debate, Romney lied 31 times.
Romney’s lying is so obvious and pathological that last week the President had enough and coined the term, “Romnesia.”
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
