NBC News' Chuck Todd claimed that Congressional Republicans refrained from talking about Benghazi on the one-year anniversary of the attacks -- the statements and actions of at least seven GOP officials on September 11 prove otherwise.
September 11, 2013 marked the twelve-year anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history and the one-year anniversary of the attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Over the last year, congressional Republicans and conservative media have formed an echo chamber of lies, smears, and conspiracies related to the Benghazi attacks and the Obama administration's handling of its aftermath.
On Meet the Press the Sunday following the anniversary, NBC News' Chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd claimed that Republicans withheld from discussing Benghazi during the one-year anniversary of the attacks: (emphasis added)
DAVID GREGORY (host): Meanwhile, we're talking about not only twelve years after 9/11, and the Middle East, Benghazi, back as a political focus this week.
TODD: It is. The House Republicans have not dropped this as an issue. They didn't talk about it last week during the one-year anniversary of the Benghazi attack, but this week on Thursday alone, three different hearings are going to be taking place on the same day on Capitol Hill. House Republicans, they don't want to drop this.
But House and Senate Republicans alike jumped at the opportunity to push Benghazi falsehoods on the anniversary of the attacks.
Several elected Republicans took to the friendly airwaves of Fox News on Wednesday, September 11 to politicize the year-old attacks and condemn the president's response. Republican Congressman Frank Wolf (VA) suggested the Obama administration was hampering an investigation into the Benghazi attacks when he spoke on Fox's America Live. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) went on Fox's Your World and complained that the debate over intervention in Syria is a distraction from the Benghazi attacks “where nothing ever occurred to ... bring people to justice.” Later, on Fox's On the Record with Greta Van Susteren, both Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) launched multiple attacks on Obama to intimate that the administration was not committed to investigating Benghazi.
Other Republican officials took to the House floor on the anniversary to call for a special committee investigation into the attacks, even though many investigations have already concluded. Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert (TX) spoke at a Benghazi rally where he attacked the White House: “We're about to the point where we're just going to have to take it as a fact that the evidence they're refusing to produce ... supports the worst of our fears about what this administration failed to do.” In a press release purporting to commemorate the anniversary, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) accused the administration of refusing to cooperate with Benghazi investigations. And Republican Sen. Marco Rubio (FL) penned an op-ed on FoxNews.com where he asserted, “The Obama administration continues to show no interest in learning from the mistakes that led to this tragic event. The administration's unwillingness to take this attack seriously will have implications for our national security for years to come.”
Republican officials and Fox News have spent the last year politicizing the Benghazi attacks, and despite Todd's assertion, the one-year anniversary proved no different.
UPDATE: In addition to the seven GOP members listed, Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner (OH) also spoke out about Benghazi on September 11. In a press release, Boehner said the Obama administration has “failed to provide sufficient answers” about the attacks, and he vowed that Republicans "[would] not stop" investigating the matter until they had “full accountability.”