On her Thursday MSNBC show, host Andrea Mitchell fretted that Republican candidates would be not be properly “fact-checked” during the upcoming presidential debate, especially on the Planned Parenthood scandal: “...one of the issues is going to be whether there's going to be any fact checking by the moderators. Certainly we can all do it later after the fact. But the Planned Parenthood debate has not been very fact-based because of those horrific videos, the edited videos.”
Mitchell conceded “a misstep by the people involved,” who “were caught in a very unflattering way,” but argued that “the fact of the case is that – according to all fact-checking – Planned Parenthood does not spend any government money and only 3% of their budget is on anything related to abortions.”
The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza replied: “Well, and live fact-checking is very, very difficult, Andrea.”
Mitchell’s misleading “fact-check” avoided the reality that the over $500 million in taxpayer funds provided to Planned Parenthood has allowed the organization to cover its other operating costs and devote more of its budget to abortion services. In addition, the claim that “only 3% of their budget is on anything related to abortions,” while technically accurate, belied the fact that Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion provider, performing over 300,000 abortions in the past year. (h/t Live Action News)
Perhaps Mitchell got her talking points directly from Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards on Monday, following a friendly softball interview with the head of the controversial organization.
Here is a transcript of the August 6 exchange:
12:36 PM ET
(...)
ANDREA MITCHELL: What about the fact that you're going to see just a row of men in the prime time debate?
KASIE HUNT: Right, well, and that's really a challenge in many ways for the Republican Party, I think. And especially, as you know, all of the focus or a lot of the focus from these candidates are going – is going to be on Hillary Clinton. And to have no female voice doing that. I mean, Carly Fiorina has been pretty effective in criticizing Hillary Clinton and I think in part it helps that she doesn't have that same gender hurdle to get over.
MITCHELL: What about the – sort of the gender gap here? It's pretty wide, but Hillary Clinton in our recent polling is losing support among women in her base, partly perhaps because of the e-mail controversies. Now per The Washington Post reporting, first to report that the FBI has gotten into it, which is an understandable, predictable but important follow-up to the fact that there was a referral from the inspectors general.
KAREN TUMULTY [THE WASHINGTON POST]: Well, and that's why I think tonight the questions that center on the whole Planned Parenthood controversy are going to be really important in that regard, too. Because not – this isn't just about this two hours here. It's about how the two hours get cut up into little clips and spliced and diced and talked about over the next few days.
MITCHELL: And Chris Cillizza, one of the issues is going to be whether there's going to be any fact checking by the moderators. Certainly we can all do it later after the fact. But the Planned Parenthood debate has not been very fact-based because of those horrific videos, the edited videos. It has certainly been a misstep by the people involved. They were caught in a very unflattering way. But the fact of the case is that – according to all fact-checking – Planned Parenthood does not spend any government money and only 3% of their budget is on anything related to abortions. But that said, this is a real cutting-edge issue now.
CHRIS CILLIZZA [THE WASHINGTON POST]: Well, and live fact-checking is very, very difficult, Andrea.
(...)
