The GOP chairman's quote raised eyebrows; by his logic, the Sept. 11, 2001 attackers may also have "done us a favor" by drawing US attention to extremism in Afghanistan.
Thomas Kean, a former governor of New Jersey, made the remarks on CNN's State of the Union Sunday talk show.
The onetime governor said Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian who failed to detonate an incendiary device on a passenger plane, "probably did us a favor."
"We had an administration which was not focused, as it should be, on terrorism and that's understandable," Kean told CNN. "They were focused on health care and global warming and the economy. That's very understandable.
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