Jeb Bush pushed back at comments made by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who suggested Republicans were successful in using the Benghazi Committee to put political pressure on Hillary Clinton. Bush told Morning Joe Thursday, “I don’t quite understand why he said that.”
“The Benghazi Committee exists because there should be an analysis of what actually happened, and what the response was, and if there was a cover up afterwards,” Bush said. “This isn’t to try to damage Hillary Clinton, and I don’t quite understand why he said that.”
Earlier this week, McCarthy, who is the frontrunner in the race to replace John Boehner as House Speaker, told Fox News host Sean Hannity, “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,” McCarthy said. “Why? Because she’s untrustable [sic]. But no one would have known any of that had happened had we not fought and made that happen.”
In his comments on Morning Joe, Bush pivoted from his criticisms of McCarthy to slam lawmakers in Washington more generally, arguing, “They’re grasping to find something to say that they’ve done something positive.”
“Well, first of all, that’s not positive and secondly that’s not the intent,” Bush said.
Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough noted that the original question posed to McCarthy was: What has the House of Representatives done under Republican leadership?
“That’s my point. If that’s as far as you can go, then that’s clearly the problem. They pass bills all the time,” Bush said. “The problem is that there has not been a strategy between the House and the Senate to be able to force the President to show his hand.”
Watch the exchange below, at about 13:00 minutes in:
