Donald Trump holds a press conference at Trump Tower in New York. (Getty)
Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked Hillary Clinton over the 2012 Benghazi attack, claiming that when the phone rang for her that night, she was sleeping. Although there is no evidence that this is the case, Trump is continuing to double down on that assertion.
In an interview on NBC Nightly News, Lester Holt pointed out that the Benghazi attack took place during the day in the United States, beginning at 3:30 p.m. in Washington, D.C. In response, Trump slightly modified his phrasing but still would not rule out that Clinton was actually literally sleeping during the attack.
“She was asleep at the wheel, whether she was sleeping or not, who knows if she was sleeping,” he said. “She might have been sleeping.”
Trump also implied that there is no way to know whether Clinton was sleeping or not, asking Lester Holt, “Were you there? Were you with her?”
As pointed out by Politifact, Clinton released a public statement regarding the attack at 10:00 p.m. that evening, and she testified in 2015 that she did not sleep all night. She also emailed her daughter Chelsea at about 11:00 p.m. A tweet was sent from her account around this time, but Trump dismissed that by saying that anybody could have tweeted from Clinton’s Twitter page.
Trump has brought up this sleeping claim not only during stream-of-consciousness speeches, but also during his prepared addresses delivered from teleprompter. He went over the same attack in his speech on Wednesday.
[Ambassador Chris Stevens] was left helpless to die as Hillary Clinton soundly slept in her bed,” Trump said. “That’s right. When the phone rang, as per the commercial, at 3:00 in the morning, Hillary Clinton was sleeping.”