Fox News’ Bret Baier didn’t seem to care whether the House Benghazi investigation is designed to harm Hillary Clinton. His only concern seemed to be that Republican Kevin McCarthy spilled the beans.

As just about everybody knows by now, House Majority Leader McCarthy stuck his foot in his mouth on the Hannity show when, trying to argue that he’s conservative enough to be Speaker of the House, he inadvertently revealed that the goal of the Select Committee on Benghazi is to damage Clinton:

MCCARTHY: 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.

Two days later, there was the following exchange with anchor Bret Baier when McCarthy visited Special Report to “clarify” his comments.

MCCARTHY: This committee was set up for one sole purpose, to find the truth on behalf of the families for four dead Americans. Now I did not intend to imply in any way that that work is political. Of course it is not.

BAIER: But that’s not what you said.

MCCARTHY: No, the point I was trying to make, I want to be very clear about this. I wasn’t saying that committee was political. That committee is solely to get the truth out. What had happened within the truth, you found out about a server. This committee’s sole purpose is to find the truth why four Americans were killed that night…

The natural next question would have been to ask McCarthy why, if “truth” is so primary, he held up the negative impact on Clinton as the major accomplishment of the committee. Or even why, given that there have already been multiple investigations and in-depth reporting that have found no there there, McCarthy thinks more are still needed if not for political purposes. There’s also the bigger question of why the GOP has embarked on this eighth investigation while giving the Bush administration a complete pass on its far bigger tragedy of invading Iraq under false pretenses.

But Baier only focused on how McCarthy may have harmed a GOP pet cause. “Obviously, Democrats have jumped on this,” Baier said. Then after playing a clip of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid blasting the committee, Baier asked, “By your comments have you made it harder for Trey Gowdy and his committee, especially as they get ready to interview Hillary Clinton?”

Later, Baier asked McCarthy, “So, did you apologize to Trey Gowdy?” and “Some of the lawmakers up there say, is this what we’re going to see as Speaker of the House?” Baier also asked, “How come it took you two days (to defend the Benghazi investigation)?”

Watch McCarthy get not quite the Republican Rehab he was probably hoping for when he went on Special Report, on October 1, above.

Crossposted at News Hounds.
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