We’ve got a new darling in the GOP presidential race: Carly Fiorina!
Being the darling du jour, however, can be dicey – just ask Rick Perry and Scott Walker, two former darlings who’re now out of the race, having turned into ugly ducklings by saying stupid things. But Fiorina is smart, sharp witted, and successful. We know this because she and her PR agents constantly tell us so. Be careful about believing anything she says, though, for Darling Fiorina is not only a relentless self-promoter, but also a remorseless liar.
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Take her widely-hailed performance in the second debate among Republican wannabes, where she touched many viewers with her impassioned and vivid attack on Planned Parenthood. With barely-contained outrage, Fiorina described a video that, she said, shows the woman’s health organization in a depraved act of peddling body parts of an aborted fetus. “Watch a fully-formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking,” said a stone-faced Fiorina, looking straight into the camera, “while someone says, ‘we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain’.”
Oh, the horror, the monstrosity of Planned Parenthood! And how moving it was to see and feel the fury of this lady candidate for president!
Only… none of it is true. While she urged the audience to go watch it, there is no such video – no fetus with kicking legs and beating heart, and no demonic Planned Parenthood official luridly preparing to harvest a brain.
So, did Fiorina make up this lie herself, or did her PR team concoct it as a bit of show-biz drama to burnish her right-wing credentials and advance her political ambition? Or, maybe she’s just spreading a malicious lie she was told by some haters of Planned Parenthood. Either way, there’s nothing darling about it… much less presidential.
“Fantasies And Fiction,” The New York Times, September 18, 2015.
“The Fight for Unplanned Parenthood,” The New York Times, September 19, 2015.
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