Republicans Fabricated Smoking Gun Emails They Maybe Illegally Leaked; Forgot To Add Smoking Gun

First, a disclaimer: We, like you, are so. Fucking. Tired! of Benghazi. If Republicans had just taken our advice , they would not be suffering in the polls because they are wasting everyone’s time, and we would not be weeping into our latte because we have to keep struggling to wring a few drops of funny out of this fucking nothingburger of a non-anything story. But this was too good to pass up: Not only were the “smoking gun” Benghazi emails that leaked this week actually devoid of anything that could be called a “smoking gun,” we now know that a) they were mostly just made up, and b) they came directly from unnamed Republican sources .

Yes, really, some idiot(s) flat re-wrote parts of the emails, then presented these exquisite works of fiction to the press as evidence of a cover-up. They did this to make the emails more scandalish, except the “scandal” they wanted to play up was “the State Department wanted to cover its ass,” which is not so much a scandal as, HELLO my name is Politics, have we met before?! Is this your first rodeo, too? Salon reminds us that the last time something like this happened, heads rolled; are you holding your breath for that to happen this time? We are not.

Please help us count the reasons why this is stupid; we’ll get you started:

1) Even if the State Department is guilty of ass-covering, nobody really cares beyond the usual wingnuts.

2) If you’re just going to make stuff up, you have to do better than this. Maybe Hillary was braiding Huma Abedin’s hair when she got the message that Chris Stevens was killed, and she said “Haha serves him right for having a penis, I hate men!”

3) Uh, we are not SURE but we think that these leaked emails were classified? This is our only source on that, and it’s a bit of extrapolation even from there, but… Holder, you got this? Brennan, can you spare a drone?

4) Good luck getting Americans to care about the other, slightly less bullshit scandals you’re pushing when you have to straight up lie to keep this one going, except

5) Go look at any mainstream American news site. Do you see any stories about “Oh hey, remember when we reported on those leaked ‘Smoking Gun’ Benghazi emails? Turns out Republican members of Congress or their associates fucking just made them up! What a weird world!”

No, you do not see any such stories. CNN’s going with IRS, Kai the Hitchhiker, and “Why dogs shouldn’t dress like pandas.” It’s a video!

[ Mother Jones ]