Journalists and commentators are criticizing Donald Trump for hypocrisy now that he’s attacked the work of Rep. Trey Gowdy’s Select Committee on Benghazi, even though Trump is largely in line with prominent thought leaders on the right who once praised Gowdy, only to then say that his Benghazi committee failed to effectively expose Hillary Clinton for wrongdoing.
Trump on Sunday responded to reports that Gowdy is set to endorse Marco Rubio for the GOP presidential nomination, saying, “I hope he does a lot better for Marco than he did for the Benghazi hearings.” He said the hearings, which led public testimony from Clinton in October that left her almost entirely unscathed, “were a disaster.”
He then shared comments from his supporters on Twitter that disparaged Gowdy.
News reports and political commentators pounced to note that Trump had previously praised Gowdy, even writing on Twitter that he would make a good attorney general in a hypothetical Trump administration.
“Scorned Trump Team Turns On Man They Once Loved,” exclaimed a headline Monday in the Daily Beast. The story referred to Trump as an “opportunist.”
A blog post at the conservative Independent Journal Review said Trump “isn’t too happy about Trey Gowdy endorsing Marco Rubio, but he better check his own past statements.”
Conservative commentator Guy Benson on Twitter called the GOP presidential candidate a “man child” because Trump “loved Gowdy until he endorsed someone else.”
Trump’s critique, however, is mostly an echo of what other conservatives said immediately after the Clinton hearing, which undermines the theory that Trump is guilty of hypocrisy or heresy against mainstream political opinion on the right.
Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer said that Gowdy “wasted a lot of his time” in the 11-hour hearing.
MSNBC “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough, a former GOP congressman, said that the hearing was a “TKO” with Clinton as the winner.
The Washington Examiner‘s Byron York said hearing turned out to be “no big deal.”
And Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, a former Reagan speechwriter, said she finished watching the hearing thinking Clinton had “just won.”
