GOP presidential candidate and failed former HP CEO Carly Fiorina doubled down on her lies about Planned Parenthood "harvesting" baby parts and receiving federal funds for abortion.
September 27, 2015

GOP presidential candidate and failed former HP CEO Carly Fiorina doubled down on her lies about Planned Parenthood "harvesting" baby parts during an appearance on NBC this Sunday. Meet the Press host Chuck Todd did actually call Fiorina out over the doctored video tapes, but he let a lot go unchecked as well, like her claim that Planned Parenthood receives federal funding for abortions, which they don't.

Fiorina basically said she didn't care what the tapes showed or didn't show, she somehow knows that this practice is happening, so she's standing by her accusations -- fact checkers be damned.

Carly Fiorina Stands By Planned Parenthood Criticism:

Carly Fiorina on Sunday stood by her disputed description of a scene from the videos targeting Planned Parenthood, but refused to say definitively that Republicans should force a government shutdown to defund the organization.

"Not at all. That scene absolutely does exist, and that voice saying what I said they were saying — "We're gonna keep it alive to harvest its brain — exists as well," Fiorina said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Fiorina's description during the last GOP debate of a scene she said she saw in the anti-Planned Parenthood videos has been widely disputed in media reports, and there is no definitive proof it existed.

The controversy surrounding the alleged scene inspired a Washington Post editorial published this Sunday titled, "Fiorina's falsehoods," which raises questions about the veracity of a number of her claims and her character as a candidate for president.

Fiorina dismissed the Washington Post, noting their fact-checker recently raised doubts about her career trajectory.

"I don't think the Washington Post has a lot of credibility here," she said.

And in a testy exchange with host Chuck Todd, Fiorina repeatedly insisted that the practice she described "is happening."

"Planned Parenthood cannot and will not deny this, because it is happening — and taxpayers are paying for it," she said, decrying funding for the women's health organization as a "political slush fund on top of being butchery that Americans…cannot support."

But Fiorina wouldn't commit to endorsing a government shutdown to defund the organization, the strategy many conservatives in Congress have floated as a response to the video. She initially laid the blame for a shutdown on President Obama and Congressional Democrats, declaring that if they're "willing to stand up and defend…this practice and shut down the government over it, then let them explain it to the American people."

Pressed on whether she'd back a shutdown to defund the group, Fiorina replied, "there are a variety of ways to deal with this."

Todd and his panel actually went after Fiorina later in the show for refusing to acknowledge the fact checkers on Planned Parenthood, and for her claim that they receive federal funding for abortions, but as they also acknowledged, facts don't seem to matter much to Republican primary voters. That doesn't excuse letting so much of what she said go unchecked while she was still on the air.

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