Carly Fiorina Lies Again
For Immediate Release: Oct. 15, 2015
A Day After Being Confronted by Planned Parenthood Patients in Iowa, She Continues to Lie About Planned Parenthood
Washington, DC — This morning on NBC’s MeetthePress, Carly Fiorina continued to flat-out lie about Planned Parenthood. A day after Fiorina was confronted by Planned Parenthood patients in Iowa calling her out on her lies, Chuck Todd pushed her to acknowledge her falsehoods — as she’s been called out by virtually every fact-checker in the country, including in a WashingtonPost editorial from this morning. However, Fiorina continued to double down and insist the mythical video exists.
CHUCK: When asked about the claim, your campaign has attacked Planned Parenthood but there is no tape or evidence that the scene you describe exists. Are you willing now to concede that you exaggerated that scene?
CARLY: No, not at all. That scene absolutely does exist, and that voice saying what I said they were saying, “We're going to keep it alive to harvest its brain” exists as well. Here's the thing. Yesterday --
CHUCK: You saw that moment on the tape?
CARLY: Yes, and I would challenge Planned Parenthood. … Planned Parenthood will not and cannot deny this because it is happening. It is happening in this nation. And taxpayers are paying for it. Planned Parenthood desperately wants everyone to think this isn't going on because when Americans realize it is going on, whether they are pro-life or pro-choice, they are horrified. This goes to the character of our nation, and it must be stopped.
CHUCK: The footage you describe at best is a re-enactment. The videos -- even the people that made the videos admitted stock footage, yet you went right along and said it's Planned Parenthood.
CARLY: Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, do you think this is not happening?
To view a clip of her interview on Meet the Press this morning, please see here: http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/carly-fiorina-disputed-abortion-clip-absolutely-does-exist-n434446.
As the WashingtonPost editorial stated this morning,
"No such scene exists, as even some of [Fiorina’s] defenders have had to admit. Ms. Fiorina was challenged by Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace to acknowledge ‘what every fact checker has found’: that the scene was only described by someone who claimed to have witnessed it but was not shown in the video.
"Ms. Fiorina could have acknowledged her error while maintaining, fairly, that the tapes contain other disturbing images and language and while affirming her objections to Planned Parenthood. Instead she insisted: ‘No, I don’t accept that at all. I’ve seen the footage.’ She went on the attack against the mainstream media, and her supporters concocted a video that splices video and audio from different places in an effort to buttress her claims. Most deceptive in the CARLY for America video is use of an image (also used in the videos produced by the Center for Medical Progress) of a fetus born prematurely, not aborted, at 19 weeks of development. The premature birth by a Pennsylvania woman had no connection to Planned Parenthood or to abortion. That, though, didn’t stop Ms. Fiorina’s supporters from using it — with the voice-over and caption of ‘Here’s a stomach, heart, kidney, and adrenal’ — to support specious allegations of Planned Parenthood selling fetal tissue for profit.
"Ms. Fiorina may have deeply felt objections to abortion. That doesn’t excuse her use of mistruths to justify her willingness to shut down the government, which by the way she seems to consider no big deal. ‘I’m not aware of any hardship to anyone, other than the veterans trying to get to the World War II memorial,’ she said of the last shutdown. When it comes to character and capability, that kind of blithe ignorance is another worrying sign."
Planned Parenthood supporters confronted Fiorina in Iowa yesterday at a campaign event, where a Planned Parenthood patient told Fiorina her story of how Planned Parenthood had made a difference in her life, and volunteers dressed as cheerleaders and referees called “foul” on Fiorina’s lies about the women’s health nonprofit.
Following is a statement from Eric Ferrero, Vice President for Communications at Planned Parenthood Action Fund:
"There is no polite way to say this: Carly Fiorina is lying. There is no video showing anything like what she claims. It's just totally false, no matter how many times she repeats it.
"Everyone from Fox News to the Wall Street Journal to now Meet the Press and the Washington Post has said that Carly Fiorina's claims are false and that this video footage doesn't exist. Caught in a lie, Carly Fiorina's campaign produced a fake video by splicing together five separate pieces of tape to concoct the video that she claimed existed."
Background:
Since there is nothing resembling what she claimed, Fiorina’s team went to work in the editing room. Here are the five different pieces they mashed up together for their one-minute video, produced after she was widely called out for lying:
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A photo of a Pennsylvania woman’s stillborn son, which was used without her permission and falsely passed off as an aborted fetus in an earlier video by the discredited Center for Medical Progress (which is behind the fraudulent video campaign).
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Video from the discredited Grantham Collection, an old anti-abortion archive based in Florida. The video is likely not even a fetus. The Grantham Collection has been called out in the past for posting photos alongside totally false claims about what they are (such as a photo of commonly used sponge tongs found in most hospitals, which the archive claimed were a tool used to tear babies’ limbs apart).
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The audio from a video the Center for Medical Progress secretly recorded of a doctor in Colorado.
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Video from a Center for Medical Progress interview with a woman who claims she used to work at an independent tissue research organization in California.
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Audio from a phone conversation the Center for Medical Progress secretly recorded with a man who works at another independent health care organization in California.
In a letter sent to Fiorina last week, Planned Parenthood Action Fund Executive Vice President Dawn Laguens wrote, “Simply put, the video you described at the debate does not exist, and the video you’re now asking people to watch is not what you claim it is.”
Below is a cut-by-cut breakdown of the fake video that Fiorina’s campaign created to try to back up her false claims about Planned Parenthood.
Breakdown of Edits in Carly Fiorina ad
:00 Intro montage of media footage noting that the video Fiorina described at the debate does not exist
:15 image from debate
:16 Fiorina speaking at debate
:22 image from discredited Grantham Collection (which is likely not even a fetus,
and is not at Planned Parenthood) with audio stripped and replaced with Fiorina
voiceover from the debate
:30 Fiorina speaking at the debate
:34 same image from discredited Grantham Collection with audio stripped and
replaced with voiceover from audio conversation with Novogenix Lab, taken from
an unrelated Center for Medical Progress video
:37 image of a stillborn (used without that family’s permission), taken from an
unrelated Center for Medical Progress video with audio stripped and replaced
with voiceover from a Planned Parenthood staff member, taken from another
unrelated Center for Medical Progress video
:41 former Stem Express worker Holly O'Donnell being interviewed, taken from a
Center for Medical Progress video
:45 Fiorina speaking at debate
:53 image from debate
Close: montage of marketing content
Planned Parenthood is proud to provide safe and legal abortion services to women, in addition to a host of preventive health care, including lifesaving cancer screenings, birth control, annual exams, and STD testing and treatment.
It’s clear that Carly Fiorina opposes safe and legal abortion, and would ban abortion nationwide if she could. She should make that case to the American public — but she should do so on the merits, without dishonesty and deception.