House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy Credits The House Select Committee On Benghazi For Hillary Clinton's “Dropping” Poll Numbers

Rep. Kevin McCarthy Touts The Claim That Benghazi Committee Harmed Clinton's Electability As Part Of “A Strategy To Fight And Win.” On the September 28 edition of Fox News' Hannity, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said the House Select Committee on Benghazi was established in part to further the GOP's partisan goals, saying, “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”:

SEAN HANNITY (HOST): I love how you asked my questions. But go ahead, that was one of my questions, go right ahead.

MCCARTHY: I knew you'd want to ask it. What you're going to see is a conservative speaker, that takes a conservative Congress, that puts a strategy to fight and win. And let me give you one example. 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. But no one would have known any of that had happened, had we not fought and made that happen.

HANNITY: I agree. That's something good, I give you credit for that, I give you credit for sequestration, I give you credit -- I'll give you credit where credit is due. [Fox News, Hannity, 9/29/15]

Fox Almost Entirely Ignored McCarthy's Admission That The Benghazi Committee Was Part Of A Partisan “Strategy”

Fox Featured Only 1 Segment On McCarthy's Remarks. Fox News' Special Report was the only Fox show that aired a segment on McCarthy's comments about the Benghazi Select Committee the day after his admission to Hannity. The Real Story made one mention of the comments. In total, Fox News mentioned or discussed McCarthy's admission for 1 minute, 20 seconds.

CNN Featured 7 Segments On McCarthy's Remarks. CNN aired seven segments and one teaser on McCarthy's comments about the Benghazi Select Committee. In total, CNN teased or discussed McCarthy's admission for 10 minutes, 32 seconds.

MSNBC Featured 14 Segments On McCarthy's Remarks. MSNBC aired 14 segments on McCarthy's comments about the Benghazi Committee. The network also mentioned the remarks one additional time and teased the story 10 times. In total, MSNBC teased, mentioned, or discussed McCarthy's admission for 1 hour, 25 minutes, 58 seconds.

Fox News Urged The Formation Of The Benghazi Committee To Investigate Its Invented Scandal

Fox Aired Over A Thousand Primetime Benghazi Segments In the 20 Months Between The Attacks And The Announcement That Congress Would Convene A Special Committee. In the year-and-a-half between the attacks and House Speaker John Boehner's formation of a special committee to investigate the administration's response to Benghazi, Fox aired over a thousand evening segments about Benghazi. [Media Matters, 9/16/14]

During That Time, Fox Relentlessly Called For A Special Committee To Investigate The Attacks. For more than 18 months before the special committee's formation, Fox repeatedly called for a special investigation into Benghazi in the form of a special prosecutor or congressional committee. [Media Matters, 5/1/14]

Methodology

Media Matters searched LexisNexis, Snapstream, and TV Eyes for discussion of Rep. Kevin McCarthy's comments about the House Select Committee on Benghazi. Searches of CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News transcripts from September 30, 2015, were conducted using the terms “McCarthy,” “Benghazi,” “committee,” or “Hannity.”