PolitiFact examines Patricia Smith's RNC speech; Would Hillary's claim have been an 'intentional lie'?

While the press spent last night and most of today discussing Melania Trump’s RNC address and charges of plagiarism, it was a speech by Patricia Smith, mother of Sean Smith, that really sent progressives digging to see how deep they could go past rock bottom. (A writer for GQ tweeted that he wanted to “beat her to death,” while other simply called her appearance wrong and exploitative.)

The mothers of seven whose deaths have fueled Black Lives Matter protests are scheduled to appear next week at the Democratic National Convention, so we’ll have to wait to see if PolitiFact runs the circumstances of their deaths through its Truth-O-Meter. For now, it’s Patricia Smith’s turn for a fact-check.

Fact-checking Checking Patricia Smith's claims about Clinton and Benghazi #RNCinCLE https://t.co/qGlD57Glp0 pic.twitter.com/5DnTH7mPxz

— PolitiFact (@PolitiFact) July 19, 2016

Why is PolitiFact checking into Smith’s claims about Benghazi? What difference, at this point, does it make?

Shorter @politifact: Several families said the same thing, but there's no recording & Clinton denies. So fuck them. https://t.co/nGr2Gyo91W

— PoliMath (@politicalmath) July 19, 2016

Harsh, but that’s not a bad summary. We’ll skip right to the end, where Bill Adair and Lauren Carroll conclude that “some [Benghazi families] said she didn’t mention a video. Clinton says she did not.”

Get this:

If she [Clinton] did say something about the video, would it have been an intentional lie? It’s very possible that this is one of the many conflicting pieces of intelligence that the administration was working with at the time.

There simply is not enough concrete information in the public domain for [Sen. Marco] Rubio or anyone to claim as fact that Clinton did or did not lie to the Benghazi families.

No, there’s no video documenting what Clinton said to Smith in the presence of her son’s flag-draped casket. But conflicting pieces of intelligence? Please. An email sent just hours after the initial attack on U.S. personnel in Benghazi concluded with a note that the White House was “reaching out to U-Tube.” And yet, phone transcripts obtained by Judicial Watch show Clinton calling Egypt’s prime minister Sept. 12 and telling him, “We know that the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack — not a protest.”

That was Sept. 12, the day after the attack. President Obama and Clinton met with the families of the four victims at Joint Base Andrews on Sept. 14 — two days later. On Sept. 16, Susan Rice blanketed the airwaves with claims of protests “sparked by this hateful video.”

But by all means, fact-check the woman whose son was killed.

https://twitter.com/mckracken83/status/755393244771471360

Another lefty #dickmove "check" by @PolitiFact

— Flight93_Militia (@SCOAMT) July 19, 2016

Feel better now? Need a hug. Douches.

— Colorado RedTraci (@goptraci) July 19, 2016

seems like bad form to "fact check" a first-hand witness, just because there isn't a transcript of what she (and others) claim.

— Jeremiah John (@JeremiahWJohn) July 19, 2016

The families have repeatedly, uniformly said what she told them. They have no material reason to lie. Clinton is a proven liar.

— "It's Always Jimmy in Philadelphia" (@JimmyMcSavage) July 19, 2016

No dispute as to what Hillary told her. Rice told the same lie to all of us.

— Jack Murrell (@iu70us) July 19, 2016

Unless you're calling Smith and other family members liars, then Hillary lied to their faces at the memorial service.

— Fake Noose (@LetItBurnUSA) July 19, 2016