“Misspoke” has to be my favorite excuse given by politicians when they try to be slick or downplay something they said that has backfired on them.
That is what just happened with Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), the ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee.
After he was clobbered for calling the ambush of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C. last month an “unfortunate accident,” he is now claiming that he simply “misspoke.”
When DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was on the Hill last week to appear before Thompson's committee, the Democrat went right for the headlines.
He stated, "You have systematically dismantled the Department of Homeland Security, put your own interests above the department, and violated the law. You are making America less safe.”
Thompson continued, “So rather than sitting here and wasting your time and ours with more corruption, lies and lawlessness, I call on you to resign. Do a real service to the country and just resign. That is, if President Trump doesn't fire you first."
This was virtually a mirror image of what we saw when Joe Biden was in office, and Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was in the very same hot seat.
When Thompson finished with his speech, he then started to discuss the November ambush in D.C., calling it an “unfortunate accident.”
Noem did not wait for him to stop, unloading right away, stating, “Unfortunate accident? It was a terrorist attack. He shot our Guardsmen in the head.”
Thompon more or less doubled down, cutting her off, “It was an unfortunate situation. But you blamed it solely on Joe Biden.”
That drew a response from Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN), who stated, “That was a murder that took place in D.C. It was not an unfortunate incident. Those comments are f–king disrespectful. I expect better from the ranking member.”
Thompson was doing the media circuit over the weekend, trying to justify his deliberate efforts to downplay the shooting of the National Guard members (one of them died from her wounds.
When Thompson was asked if he thought the ambush was an accident, he responded, “Oh, absolutely not. And obviously, let me be clear, I was moving toward the discussion that she could not blame [former President] Joe Biden on the situation because she approved this person’s asylum application.”
The beauty of this is that it was CNN News Central host Kate Bolduan who fed Thompson his excuse, asking him if he “misspoke,” to which he replied, “Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.”
He did not misspeak, and it is sickening that the media fed him his excuse to try to get out of this mess. Sadly, however, that is the state of today’s mainstream media, especially CNN.
