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Watch The Very Long Benghazi Movie Trailer

by Abby Johnston

It was probably appropriate that the trailer for Michael Bay's Benghazi movie, 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, rolled during the fourth Republican debate Tuesday night. Benghazi has become a top talking point for the GOP, but the trailer was light on Hillary Clinton's emails and big on explosions. Regardless, the movie, which will be released January 15, 2016, promises to depict the "true story you were never told" about that night in Libya.

As The Hill notes, it was perfect timing for the trailer. Just before cutting to commercial, Ben Carson brought up what he said were Clinton's lies in the handling of the Benghazi attack, which happened when she was Secretary of State.

I look at somebody like Hillary Clinton, who sits there and tells her daughter and a government official that ‘No, this was a terrorist attack,’ and then tells everybody else it was a video. Where I come from, they call that a lie.

The movie centers on six special ops members who went to the American compound in Benghazi to defend it from attack on September 11, 2012. The attack killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, and it has become a political flashpoint because of Clinton's role as Secretary of State at the time.

Michael Bay has credits directing Pearl Harbor and Transformers, so subtlety isn't exact his forte. The film has explosions, lots of yelling, and terrorists shooting at the American flag. But it seems that the trailer already demonstrates liberty being taken on some debunked claims about the events. Namely, American officials were never told to stand down, but that's plainly seen in the trailer.

Just after the attack, the U.S. House Intelligence Committee launched a two-year investigation, which ultimately concluded that the CIA and the military had no performed no wrongdoing, and that there was no order for the special ops team to stand down.

The trailer seemingly runs contrary to this fact, with a character called "the Chief" telling the team, verbatim, to "stand down." If the finished film is as suggested in this trailer, then Bay is not only exaggerating, but revising history outright.

The movie could be bad news for Clinton. It releases just before the Iowa caucuses, and will likely reignite an already fierce debate about her handling of the incident.