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While Benghazi Committee Bickers, Hillary Clinton Uses Hearing to Campaign

The Democratic frontrunner brushes off tough questions, skates on the easy ones, and tries her best to look unruffled.
Photo by Michael Reynolds/EPA

Hillary Clinton, with an ever-so-slightly bemused smile, sat back as top members of the House Committee on Benghazi descended into a finger-pointing spat among one another in the committee's assembly room, on Capitol Hill on Thursday morning.

Her calm in the face of the heated exchange, which broke out shortly before a lunch-time recess, was in keeping with the attitude she kept throughout her appearance at the day-long testimony hearing: measured restraint.

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With no bombshells or revealing new details emerging from the eighth congressional hearing on the deadly 2012 attack on the US diplomatic compound in Libya, Clinton used the appearance to make political points, pushing her competency and using this most unlikely of stages as a platform to present herself as presidential material.

The tactic was notable to political and social media pundits who, throughout the testimony, commented on Clinton's cool. On Thursday, as the panel's Republican chairman, Trey Gowdy, and its Democratic ranking member, Elijah Cummings, squabbled with raised voices, Clinton kept her tone even. Meanwhile, her campaign was busy making lemonade, seizing on her appearance before the committee as an opportunity to campaign.

.Challenging part of hearings. Sharper GOP Qs, after hours of testimony, seem aimed at provoking intemperate response from — David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod)October 22, 2015

Related: Watch the full testimony here

As the morning wore on, Clinton's official Twitter account fired off tweets steadily throughout her testimony, taking lines from her opening statement and other snippets from her answers and turning them into catchy phrases and media-friendly quotes, which her campaign likely hopes will be regurgitated for weeks or months.

"We need creative, confident…leadership that integrates and balances the tools of diplomacy, development, and defense." —Hillary

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 22, 2015

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Throughout the day, Clinton gave careful rebuttals to tough questions from Republican committee members, and gave equally primed answers to softball questions posed by her Democratic colleagues.

When questioning turned to Clinton's alleged failure to provide adequate security for diplomatic personnel in the lead-up to the attack that killed four Americans including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Clinton replied that US intelligence had not indicated any "credible or actionable threat." Steven's requests for additional security never reached her desk directly, she said.

.— Hillary For Alabama (@Hillary4AL)October 22, 2015

Hillary Clinton on the Republicans hot seat, looks calm and well composed as she gently and carefully replied to qstns without pain. Kudos

— Beaty Groth, (@BeatyGroth)October 22, 2015

— Mr. Weeks (@MrDane1982)October 22, 2015

Similarly, Clinton deflected questions on her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, saying she mostly met with people in person or used the phone and "did not do the vast majority of my work from email." In response to questions from Republicans, including Gowdy who claimed private citizen Sidney Blumenthal had "unfettered access" to the then-secretary and was her most trusted adviser on Libya, Clinton patiently replied Blumenthal was merely a friend who gave her unsolicited advice, some of it useful, but most not.

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Where the Republicans hit with embarrassing extracts from the bound cache of emails sitting on the bench before them, Clinton ducked, refusing at times to turn to certain "tabs" in binders, as instructed. But not everybody saw in her attitude a stateswoman-like poise.

— Debra Slack (@debraslack)October 22, 2015

.— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee)October 22, 2015

Related: The GOP's Benghazi Kerfuffle Couldn't Have Come at a Better Time for Hillary Clinton

The Benghazi committee has faced backlash in recent days, after at least two senior members of the Republican Party and a former investigator working for the panel publicly admitted that the committee's inquiry was designed to hurt Clinton's chances in 2016.

Democrats have long made similar arguments since the Republican-led Benghazi body was established in May 2014. On Thursday, Gowdy defended the committee and the hearing saying it was "not a prosecution" and that Clinton was just one of many important witnesses in the investigation.

Gowdy also appeared hurt when more than an hour into the hearing, Democrat Adam Smith said that "we have learned absolutely nothing" new about what actually occurred in Benghazi.

.— CSPAN (@cspan)October 22, 2015

According to a Monmouth University poll this week, 52 percent of Americans surveyed believe the Benghazi committee is more interested in going after Clinton, in contrast to 32 percent who believe the panel is invested in finding out the facts.