Well hey, Trump showed that the way to get noticed in this crowded field is by being the most vile example of humanity of the group, so it came as no surprise that Carly Fiorina would say something vile to get people talking, and since everyone and their mother on the right has latched on to those Planned Parenthood videos that were edited so deceptively that they make Expelled look like an honest film, it was no surprise that she brought them up. What was a bit of a shock was just how far she was willing to take the lie. From Salon (Only cause it’s Digby):
In that same debate when she bizarrely combined an answer about Iran with the Planned Parenthood controversy, she also challenged Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, with a straight face, to watch a video showing “a fully formed fetus on the table its heart beating its legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.”
Of course the debate moderator didn’t immediately ask her what the fuck video she was watching, or inquire about the new Planned Parenthood video apparently directed by Eli Roth. No, that would be doing a service to the electorate. Instead it fell to fact checkers which reach only a small fraction of the debate’s audience.
This claim was also thoroughly fact checked and proved her to be lying. None of the videos produced by the hoaxters who made the Planned Parenthood videos showed what she described.
Like Carly, or the GOP base for that matter, cares about what fact checkers say is true or false. What is truth anyway when you’re fighting those evil feminists and all atheists favorite fast food joint, Planned Parenthood?
But instead of apologizing or just quietly dropping the subject, Fiorina’s Super-PAC has created an ad featuring some footage like that she described in a bold doubling down on the falsehood:
RH Reality check describes it this way:
A doctored video is being used to defend GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina’s false statements about a doctored video…
The video, according to a fact-check from Planned Parenthood, splices together five different video and audio sources from [the deceptive anti-abortion group Center for Medical Progress]: an interview with a former tissue procurement technician, Holly O’Donnell; a photo of a Pennsylvania woman’s stillborn son that was used without permission; a video from a discredited anti-choice archive called the Grantham Collection; audio from a secret video of a doctor in Colorado; and audio from a surreptitiously recorded phone conversation with a man who works at another independent health-care organization in California.
The deceptive ad ends up showing a “fully formed fetus” with “legs kicking” (a stock image), an unrelated and completely out-of-context audio quote about a “heart beating,” and a mention of harvesting a brain.
The Grantham Collection is an anti-abortion archive which uses photos of still births or miscarriages, among other things, to deceive people into believing they are viewing aborted fetuses. According to Mother Jones, the group even claimed that a photo of basic medical tongs is an image of the tool used to pull apart the limbs of an aborted fetus.This stuff is so ghoulish you have to wonder what kind of person would spend their time making up such fantasies.
Of course, thanks to the infinite wisdom of our political system, Carly can reap all the positives effects of the video on the rabid right while maintaining perfect deniability in the face of moderate criticism since it was released by a pro-Fiorina SuperPAC. How long has our democracy been the laughing stock of the world anyway? But instead of playing the SuperPAC card, Carly instead played the “cancer survivor” card and then just continued to lie.
In response to a request for comment on the veracity of the video, Fiorina’s campaign didn’t take a strictly legal approach and say they have no relationship with the Super PAC and therefore cannot comment on the ad. Her campaign spokeswomen Sarah Isgur Flores replied to an inquiry from Mother Jones via email:
“Carly is a cancer survivor and doesn’t need to be lectured on women’s health by anyone. Over their long and factually incorrect letter, Planned Parenthood doesn’t and can’t deny they butchering babies and selling their organs [sic]. This is about the character of our nation.”
Actually, Planned Parenthood does and can deny “they butchering babies and selling their organs.” It is simply not true.
Unfortunately, Carly is discovering and taking advantage of a sad fact in American politics. If you lie, and keep lying, never admitting you lied, repetition and ignorance will find many people believing your lie as the truth.
Dave Weigel at the Washington Post wrote:
Other campaigns have climbed down from similar claims about the videos. Fiorina and her allies have done no such thing. Three days after the debate, CARLY for America — the PAC that legally has to keep its distance from Fiorina’s actual campaign — put together a video that spliced the candidate’s answer with different clips. The viewer, hearing about the controversy but unaware of the original videos, might think that Fiorina nailed it.
That would be the idea. And it’s working. Think Progress interviewed some of her fans in South Carolina this week and they absolutely believe that Planned Parenthood is videotaping the butchering of babies to harvest their brains because this wonderful woman told them so.
Cleveland, Ohio resident Carol McDowell, who came to Fiorina’s event while on vacation in Charleston, said Fiorina’s debate performance really “won us over” — pointing to two of her friends. “I loved the Planned Parenthood response that she had. The things being done today — it’s gone way beyond just abortion and it needs to stop.”…
Foster Disbelief 