Hopefully by now you’ve recovered from the trauma of Wednesday’s dreary CNBC debate, wherein the 64,529 Repubicans still running for president did their best to avoid making any specific statements. (Huckabee came out in favor of curing diabetes, so congratulations on that bold stance.)
Despite their best efforts, a few of the candidates actually made some claims, and naturally some of them were not exactly what you would call “true.”
Some of the lies were boring statistical fabrications, but others were more bizarre. And even though the statistical claims are probably more important, I have a feeling we’ll be hearing a lot more about the weird ones — and in fact a few of them may plague the candidates until they finally drop out. Carly Fiorina, for one, seems to be getting a frisson of panic that people are still needling her about her lies from the last debate, and she nearly bit the head off of a CNN personality for asking her about her imaginary abortion video.
You remember Carly’s weird abortion “memory,” right? She described a video that doesn’t exist in which a fetus twitches and technicians cackle about its brain. Poor hapless host Alisyn Camerota asked her again about that, and Carly WAS NOT HAVING IT.
“Wow, Alisyn, I can’t believe we’re having this conversation, honestly,” Fiorina said — and watch the video, she is PISSED. “It’s clear now, it’s very clear that Planned Parenthood is harvesting body parts. So clear that they had to announce that they no longer take compensation for it. Honestly, this has been hashed and rehashed. Is there no other issue of economic import to the middle class in the United States of America that you’d like to talk about this morning?”
(Also, I’d just like to point out that the website linked above, Crooks and Liars, is in the midst of a “fall donation drive,” and provides a snail mail address to which you can send checks! The future of journalism, Jesus wept, etc.)
Yes, in fact, Alisyn would also like to talk about Fiorina’s claims that “ninety-two percent of the jobs lost during Barack Obama’s first term belonged to women.” That’s been totally debunked, but of course Fiorina’s sticking to it. Because the best thing you can do when caught in a lie is keep lying.
Chris Christie had some fun fabrications as well, calling the Democratic candidates socialists, isolationists, and pessimists — which, ugh, what? Just on the pessimism thing, it’s the Republicans who are claiming that things are lousy in the country right now, despite steady job gains over Obama’s terms. Whatever.
Christie’s worst lie came when he parroted Donald Trump, who made up the “fact” that Bernie’s tax plan is “going to raise your taxes to 90 percent,” which can’t possibly be true because Bernie hasn’t even released a tax plan. It’s not a surprise that Trump is just making shit up — I’d expect nothing less — but it’s kind of nutty that Chris Christie is stealing his lies.
If anything, that provides a case study in how the candidates are treated differently. Trump made up a fact, and everyone just sort of shrugged and threw it on the pile of insane Trump statements. Christie repeated it, and he was called out as a liar.
The weirdest claim was from Ben Carson, who was criticized for his connection to a company that promised miracle cures for cancer. “I didn’t have an involvement with them,” Carson said, knowing full well that they hired him to deliver promotional speeches, and even linked his own cancer recovery to the pills. Crazy!
And then there’s the odd moment when Donald Trump was asked about his criticism of Mark Zuckerberg’s immigration stance, and Trump said that he “never said that … Somebody’s really doing some bad fact-checking.” Except that Trump’s own website is openly critical of Zuckerberg. It’s no surprise that Trump wasn’t aware of that — his campaign materials are surely written by other people, and it seems unlikely that he cares enough to read them — it’s just fun to see him caught with his pants down.
But of all the misrepresentations at the debate, Trump’s Zuckerberg moment probably matters the least. His followers don’t care about accuracy or honesty or responsibility. They’re just in it for entertainment. If anything, I think Trump ought to be lying more — he can say anything he wants, as long as it’s fun to watch, so why not go further? Carly Fiorina should take a lesson from him.
