Bill Maher on Benghazi: 'I Still Don't Know What the Scandal Is

HBO

Bill Maher on Friday exasperatedly declared that he doesn't understand the fuss over Benghazi, repeating, "I still don't know what the scandal is."

"A guy testified that he heard when there was the attack on the embassy, that an attack was going on, so he called the Air Force, or somebody in the military, to send jets, and they said I'm sorry, they couldn't get there in time. The end," Maher said on his HBO show "Real Time with Bill Maher."

Glenn Greenwald, columnist for The Guardian, said part of the controversy was that the attack happened six weeks before the November election when everyone was "desperate" to protect their side -- Fox News said it was "the worst scandal ever," while MSNBC maintained that Obama "did absolutely nothing wrong."

"A U.S. ambassador was killed, there's only been six times in our nation's history when that happened. The president went on the air and other people did too and made statements that proved to be untrue about why the attack took place, that it was a reaction to this film -- that's just a reality, whether they were lying or just an error, the statements they made were untrue," Greenwald said.

"It was a fluid situation," Maher protested.

"No, but when he government goes on the air and says things that prove to be untrue, that is something that needs to be investigated," Greenwald said.

Miami Herald columnist and MSNBC contributor Joy Reid called Benghazi a "prototypical Washington scandal," saying people are worked up over "12 edits to a memo."

"That's what we're down to. Republicans are so desperate for a scandal," she said. "They're implying that either Barack Obama himself, president of the United States, decided not to protect that embassy...or that they created this entire coverup to stop people from knowing that they haven't gotten rid of every single member of Al-Qaeda."

National Review's Charles Cooke disagreed, saying that "the media sides with power," which is why Benghazi wasn't reported on fully from the start.

"What should they have reported? What was the scandal, you still haven't told me...what's the crime, something bad happened in the world -- Obama's supposed to micromanage everything that happens in the world?" Maher asked.

Watch the full discussion below: