Lie to us!
How do you get "true, but misleading" out of Carly Fiorina describing something that
never happened?
During CNN's post-debate special, CNN correspondent Tom Foreman discussed Fiorina's statements about having seen in the anti-choice Center for Medical Progress' videos targeting Planned Parenthood "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." Foreman says Fiorina's statement was "true but it is misleading"
It's only "true, but misleading" in the sense that Carly Fiorina was completely lying. Even the faked tapes, which rely on stock footage
not taken inside any Planned Parenthood,
show no such thing:
But the things Fiorina describes -- the legs kicking, the intact "fully formed fetus," the heart beating, the remarks about having to "harvest its brain" -- are pure fiction. [...]
There is no video of the images that O'Donnell describes seeing, nor is there any mention of instructions to "keep it alive so we can harvest its brain," so it's still not the footage Fiorina describes having watched.
Carly Fiorina wasn't just describing a fake, edited tape doctored to invent a case against Planned Parenthood—she invented imaginary footage in that tape. Getting from Carly Fiorina describing scenes from a movie that's only playing inside her head to "true, but misleading" involves a few feats of logic I'm not familiar with. If I say I saw Carly Fiorina's head spin around three times while she perched on the podium making birdlike chirping noises during the debate, is that
true but misleading because even though that may not have happened in any actual reality inhabited by any of us, it feels like it
could have, with the right stock footage added?
Honestly, fact checking presidential candidates should not be the most difficult part of journalism. I can understand when there's disagreement over nuances, but this ain't that. This is a candidate inventing a "fact" out of thin air.