As Jim Geraghty has noted, last night’s Republican convention schedule reflected an attempt to focus in on the harm inflicted on ordinary Americans by the policies of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. To that end, Pat Smith, the mother one of the four Americans killed September 11, 2012, in a terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, offered a scathing rebuke of Hillary Clinton for her actions — or lack thereof — that contributed to the death of her son, Sean.
Sean Smith was an information-management officer with the United States Foreign Service who was killed along with Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and CIA contractors Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.
Hillary Clinton blamed the Benghazi attack on a spontaneous protest against an Internet video critical of Islam — though she told foreign officials and her daughter Chelsea that an “an al Qaeda-like group” was responsible for the deaths of the four Americans.
Last night, Pat Smith told Americans the facts:
For all of this loss, for all of this grief, for all of the cynicism the tragedy in Benghazi has wrought upon America, I blame Hillary Clinton.
I blame Hillary Clinton personally for the death of my son.
In an email to her daughter shortly after the attack, Hillary Clinton blamed it on terrorism.
But when I saw Hillary Clinton at Sean’s coffin ceremony, just days later, she looked me squarely in the eye and told me a video was responsible.
Since then, I have repeatedly asked Hillary Clinton to explain to me the real reason why my son is dead.
I’m still waiting.
Unfortunately, Donald Trump and his incompetent campaign allowed Smith’s powerful message to be trampled. In an astonishing display of political malpractice, Trump phoned in to Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News show while Smith was on stage giving her speech. The GOP nominee was counterprogramming his own convention — distracting the audience most sympathetic to him from last night’s most compelling messenger.
https://twitter.com/GayPatriot/status/755201973113225216
Simply astonishing.