In a stunning endorsement of the doctored video with an attempt to excuse Fiorina flat out lie by saying what he thought she was trying to say Hugh Hewitt (a conservative Catholic) regurgitated the shamefully distorted Republican propaganda as fact. Hewitt then threw in a tired old cliche from a Jack Nicholson movie saying "Planned Parenthood can't handle the truth" to support his outrageous lie that Planned Parenthood is "trafficking in body parts".
Meet the Press Transcript - September 20, 2015
CHUCK TODD:
As we saw earlier, Carly Fiorina was perceived as the winner of Wednesday's Republican debate by Republican voters. The one moment of hers that has gained extra attention is her claim about those undercover Planned Parenthood tapes. Here what she said.
(BEGIN TAPE)
CARLY FIORINA:
Watch 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."
(END TAPE)
CHUCK TODD:
Awfully graphic there. Fiorina was presumably talking about highly-edited tapes made by an anti-abortion rights group. And now Fiorina's super PAC has doubled down on it, putting out an online video that appears to show what Fiorina described. We're not going the show this on camera right now.
But Planned Parenthood says that Fiorina's claim, "This is completely and totally untrue. Every part of what she said is flat-out false." Now, Planned Parenthood also says that the fetus that was shown in the video was from stock footage, edited into the tapes themselves by the anti-abortion rights group and is not related to a Planned Parenthood health center.
A non-partisan fact-checking service called PolitiFact said that the anti-abortion rights group took an interview with a woman identified as a former tissue procurement technician talking about what she saw and edited the fetus video onto that interview. And PolitiFact weighted Fiorina's statement as mostly false. A highly charged issue, abortion always is, Hugh Hewitt, Fiorina go too far in her description here?
HUGH HEWITT:
You know, I want to borrow from Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men. Planned Parenthood can't handle the truth. And if the president of the United States wants to shut down the government over these videos, I hope they take Cathy McMorris Rodgers, who is the chairman of the House Republican Conference, and have her speak three times a day during the shutdown with those videos running in the background.
I've watched them. I heard that technician. I believe Carly Fiorina intended to say that if you hear someone talking about this, because they're so terrible, they're so awful that they get jumbled in your head and you have to avert your eyes, because it's murder.
And so if Planned Parenthood wants to occasion the endless role of those videos, which they're doing, they'll stand on that hill all day. But I hope Cathy McMorris Rodgers if the government shuts down, and the president shuts the government down in order to fund Planned Parenthood's trafficking of body parts, that that's how they handle it.
CHUCK TODD:
Well, Maria, I don't think Planned Parenthood believes this is what they're doing. Go ahead.
MARIA SHRIVER:
I just think we can all take a deep breath and take deep breaths. But you talked about what Carly Fiorina intended. That's different than what she actually said. You agree with that, correct?
HUGH HEWITT:
She should've said, "I heard the technician talking about this." But in that, I was saying on the set--
MARIA SHRIVER:
Everybody agrees that these videos are highly edited. And we also can take a step back and say that Planned Parenthood does a lot of comprehensive medical work--
HUGH HEWITT:
I don't agree that they're highly edited. This is highly edited. The debate the other day was highly edited.
MARIA SHRIVER:
This is live.
HUGH HEWITT:
Well, yeah, but it's been edited in the interviews that Chuck did earlier.
MARIA SHRIVER:
Planned Parenthood does a lot of good work.
HUGH HEWITT:
Oh, I--
MARIA SHRIVER:
--low-income families that does a lot more--
HUGH HEWITT:
But they should not be funded by the federal government if they're going to trade in baby parts. They shouldn't. They shouldn't give a dime for them if they're going to do that.
MARIA SHRIVER:
Well, they do a lot of healthcare work on behalf of women.
HUGH HEWITT:
They do.
MARIA SHRIVER:
They do testing. They do breast exams.
HUGH HEWITT:
They do.
MARIA SHRIVER:
There's a lot that they do.
HUGH HEWITT:
Not with my money. They shouldn't do it.
MARIA SHRIVER:
They don't trade, selling of body parts.
Hewitt claims these tapes weren't highly edited? How can Hewitt make that call without ever seeing the unedited tapes? Then Hewitt tries to make excuses for Carly Fiorina outrageous lie? That's disgusting!