House Benghazi Select Committee chair Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) may have earned plaudits from his colleagues for overseeing an Oct. 22 eleven-hour grilling of presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton.
But the American people appear to collectively believe the public hearing was a song-and-dance; a waste of time.
According to the results of an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released on Tuesday, 42 percent of Americans said days after the hearing that they believed Clinton’s use of a private email server while Secretary of State is “important,” with 37 percent of respondents describing the matter as “very important.”
Days before the hearing, the same survey measured those who believed Clinton’s server was “important” and “very important” at 47 percent and 40 percent of the population, respectively.
Meanwhile, the number of respondents who told pollsters that Clinton’s email scheme was “not important” grew after Gowdy’s public inquiry, from 44 percent to 48 percent.
The percentage of Americans who told NBC News/WSJ that they “strongly” believe the matter to be not important also increased, from 12 to 15 percent.
Immediately after the hearing, Republican lawmakers hailed Gowdy as a tenacious public servant.
“It proves (Clinton) knew it was not a protest caused by video and that she went along with an administration that was in full damage control,” US Senator and struggling presidential candidate Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said.
House oversight committee chair Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said Gowdy is “first class” and did “a wonderful job” at the Oct. 22 hearing.
“Sometimes there’s more flailing and demonstrable exercised waving of the arms when Democrats don’t have much material to work with,” he said. “It’s just intended, I think, in the Benghazi committee, to be a bit of a distraction from the actual truth and facts. That’s my own personal opinion.”
The American people, however, seem to be more in agreement with Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). The democratic socialist famously blasted Republicans’ obsession with Clinton’s email server at the Democrats’ first primary debate.
“Let me say something that may not be great politics. But I think the Secretary is right, and that is that the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails,” Sanders said.
“Middle class in this country is collapsing,” he added. “We have 27 million people living in poverty. We have massive wealth and income inequality. Our trade policies have cost us millions of decent jobs. The American people want to know whether we’re going to have a democracy or an oligarchy as a result of Citizens United. Enough of the e-mails. Let’s talk about the real issues facing America.”
Read the results of the NBC/WSJ Poll here. Listen to the District Sentinel Radio episode on the Benghazi hearing: “RADIO-GHAZI.”
