The Washington Post’s Philip Rucker reported this week that Carly Fiorina has been “proved wrong” about her recent remarks on the Planned Parenthood scandal, even though he seems to admit elsewhere that her comments were mostly accurate.
After declaring Fiorina in the wrong, the Post reporter seemingly conceded that her comments during the second televised GOP debate were largely accurate in their characterization of the seventh of 10 undercover videos produced by a pro-life activist group.
The videos, which come from a pro-lief activist group called the Center for Medical Progress, feature a number of Planned Parenthood executives discussing methods for procuring human organs from the remains of aborted children.
Fiorina dared Democrats to watch the videos, which she said showed a “fully formed fetus on the table.”
The video she referenced does show an infant, the product of an “intact delivery abortion,” thrashing around in a specimen tray as it breathes its last breath. The video also features testimony from a former technician, Holly O’Donnell, who alleges they were called on at times to salvage brains from aborted children.
Rucker maintains in his article, however, that Fiorina is incorrect in her description of the video.
“On the facts, Carly Fiorina has been proved wrong,” he wrote. But later in the same article, Rucker says that her comments are merely “conflated.”
“The video in question showed stock footage of an aborted fetus with the voice of a technician talking about a procedure to harvest tissue from an aborted fetus,” he wrote.
This is exactly how Fiorina described the video.
It’s possible that Rucker’s assertion that the sole female voice in the 2016 GOP field has been “proved wrong” refers to her claiming incorrectly that a Planned Parenthood affiliate can be heard in one of the videos saying that they would purposely keep infants alive longer so as to salvage their brains. This is not said in the video referenced during the debate by Fiorina, and she is incorrect on that point.
Rucker did not respond when asked by the Washington Examiner’s media desk to clarify if that’s how Fiorina was proven wrong.
Fiorina, meanwhile, refuses to walk back her debate comments. The videos reveal a “hideous reality,” the Republican presidential candidate said Sunday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”
She added that the videos go “to the character of our nation,” adding, “Planned Parenthood is aborting fetuses alive to harvest their brains and other body parts. That is a fact.”
