Democrats and their media allies are suddenly wrapping themselves in the First Amendment like it’s a campaign prop. As California Gov. Gavin Newsom sues Fox News for $787 million in defamation over its coverage of a phone call with President Donald Trump, Jimmy Kimmel blasts the FCC for an “attack on free speech” after his show was suspended amid controversy over remarks about Charlie Kirk’s assassination—with affiliates preempting episodes and over 1,600 complaints flooding the agency.
My new book “Clinton Hoax, Obama Coup” reveals the mother of all hypocrisies: In 2012, the media didn’t need lawsuits or regulators. They censored themselves—deliberately vanishing a presidential confession from national TV and refusing to report it at all—to protect Barack Obama and hand him a second presidential term.
Just days after jihadists butchered Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi, Obama sat on CBS’s Late Show with David Letterman and personally pushed the administration’s grotesque hoax: blaming the terror attack on a ridiculous YouTube video.
“Extremists and terrorists used [the video] as an excuse to attack a variety of our embassies, including the consulate in Libya,” Obama declared on air.
The very next day, the National Counterterrorism Center director testified under oath: It was a straight-up terrorist attack. No protest. No video. Premeditated jihadist slaughter.
Yet here’s the real scandal: Not a single major outlet reported what Obama actually said about Benghazi on Letterman. The Washington Post, LA Times, CBS, NBC, and Wall Street Journal all covered the appearance—but every headline magically fixated only on Obama slamming Romney’s “47%” remark. The Benghazi confession? Completely erased from their coverage. They didn’t just ignore it; they actively censored it by pretending it never happened.
Then came the physical vanishing act. CBS and the official Letterman YouTube archives still serve up plenty of clips from that night—including Obama ripping Romney. But the exact moment the President pinned Benghazi on the video? Poof—gone. A third-party uploader posted the full interview on September 19, 2012. It racked up 165,000 views. Time Magazine even embedded the full video … before it was wiped.The Lex Luger account got terminated for bogus “copyright infringement.” The Washington Post’s own link to the full interview now dead-ends in a 404 error.
This was cold-blooded self-censorship on two levels. First, the broader media refused to report the most damaging part of the interview at all. Second, the network that aired it made the evidence disappear. Plenty of other full Letterman episodes with presidents and celebs remain online. But this one—catching Obama red-handed pushing the Benghazi hoax right before Election Day—got erased.
And here’s the explosive question no one has answered: Did the Obama administration quietly pressure CBS and the rest of the media to kill the clip and refuse to report it? We may never know for sure, but the coordinated silence and sudden disappearance scream coordination at the highest levels. No subpoenas. No FCC complaints. Just quiet, ruthless deletion to prop up the “al-Qaeda on the run” campaign fairy tale.
As “Clinton Hoax, Obama Coup” lays bare in devastating detail, the rot went straight to the top. CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell personally scrubbed intelligence talking points of al-Qaeda references. (The same Mike Morell who later orchestrated the Hunter Biden laptop “Russian disinformation” letter to help Biden win.)
In the 2012 second presidential debate, Romney held a political nuke he never detonated: Obama’s September 18 Letterman interview—six days after Benghazi—where the president personally blamed the attack on an “extremely offensive video” that “caused great offense” and was used by “extremists and terrorists” as an “excuse.” Romney likely never knew it existed. The blackout held and Obama cruised to victory.
The hysterical screaming from Newsom, Kimmel, and others in the media today only exposes their breathtaking hypocrisy. When conservative media drops facts they hate, Democrats sprint to court demanding hundreds of millions. When a liberal late-night host feels heat, they cry “tyranny!” But back in 2012, when their guy needed a damaging confession erased—both from reporting and from the record—CBS and the entire media did the dirty work themselves.
This is the proven blueprint for how the permanent ruling class shields itself from accountability.
My new book Clinton Hoax, Obama Coup rips the lid off the entire machine, from the erased Letterman tape to the intelligence community’s repeated election interference.
The tape—and the reporting on it—may be gone forever. But the evidence in these pages cannot be erased.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.
