NEW YORK – During NBC’s Commander-in-Chief Forum tonight, host Matt Lauer numerous times lobbed hard-hitting follow-up questions at Donald Trump, and raised additional challenges to the Republican presidential candidate’s responses to questions from Lauer and the audience.
The industries network anchor, however, seems to have let Hillary Clinton off the hook on numerous issues, failing to ask glaringly obvious follow-ups to Clinton’s responses and to the general themes discussed during the forum.
Here, in no particular order, are six basic follow-up challenges that Lauer failed to pose to Clinton during tonight’s presidential symposium.
1 – Lauer did not challenge Clinton when she stated categorically, “There is no evidence my system was hacked.”
Lauer could have pointed out, as Foreign Policy Magazine recently noted, the FBI could not determine whether Clinton’s private email system was hacked because it was not provided full access to her electronic devices, thus interfering with the investigation.
2 – During the conversation related to Clinton’s emails, Lauer had multiple opportunities to confront the embattled candidate on her deletion of as many as 33,000 emails from her private server, but he did not once mention the deletions.
3 – Lauer failed to bring up the controversial Clinton Foundation at any point during the symposium, despite numerous openings to do so. He could have asked whether any of Clinton’s deleted emails were related to the Foundation; or he might have challenged Clinton on reports that more than half of the people outside the government that she met with while Secretary of State either donated to the Foundation or were tied to companies or groups that provided donations.
4 – Clinton’s support for the U.S.-led NATO military campaign in Libya was discussed, yet Lauer did not see fit to raise a single question about the September 11, 2012 Benghazi attacks or her State Department’s role in denying security requests to the fated U.S. Special Mission there.
5 – Lauer further did not challenge Clinton on Libya becoming a sanctuary for the Islamic State and various other terrorist organizations following the downfall of Muammar Gaddafi.
6 – In the discussion on Libya, Lauer could have made an issue out of dangerous looting of Gadhafi’s massive reserves of MANPADS. The largest terrorist looting of MANPADS took place immediately after the 2001 U.S.-NATO military campaign, strongly pushed by Clinton, that toppled Gadhafi’s regime. Those MANPADS have reportedly been proliferated worldwide and are now a major global threat.
NATO failed to immediately protect the reserves of MANPADS.
As I reported at the time:
Gadhafi had hoarded Africa’s biggest-known reserve of MANPADS, with a stock said to number between 15,000 and 20,000. Many of the missiles were stolen by militias fighting in Libya, including those backed by the U.S. in their anti-Gadhafi efforts. There were reports of a Western effort to secure the MANPADS, including collecting some from rebels in Libya.
Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.
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