I watched the full 4 hours of Republican debating last night, because I evidently hate myself, and for me the biggest takeaway was clearly Carly Fiorina's capacity for lying.
Fiorina described scenes from the anti-Planned Parenthood smear videos that simply do not exist, but CNN's "Fact-Checking Team" says her claims were "true, but misleading."
During the debate, Fiorina claimed she watched a video of a "fully formed fetus on the table, it's heart beating, it's legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain." The video Fiorina may have been referring to features a woman describing her alleged encounter with a fetus with a beating heart, but there's no video of that. The video Fiorina was referring to was stock footage of a fetus and it wasn't shot at Planned Parenthood.
Furthermore, the videos do not include anyone saying they need to keep a fetus alive to harvest its brain. The video of a fetus kicking its legs also wasn't filmed at Planned Parenthood.
Despite all of this, CNN's team of bullshitters gave Fiorina a pass. CNN's post-debate pundits and their "fact-checking team" said it was kind of true.
via Media Matters
During CNN's post-debate special, CNN correspondent Tom Foreman discussed Fiorina's statements about having seen in the anti-choice Center for Medical Progress' videos targeting Planned Parenthood "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." Foreman says Fiorina's statement was "true but it is misleading"
[...]
An article published on CNN.com by the "CNN Fact-Checking Team" -- described as "researchers, editors and reporters across CNN" -- analyzed some of the GOP candidates' statements during the September 16 debate and rated them "True; Mostly True; True, but Misleading; False; or It's Complicated." CNN.com rated Fiorina's statement about the footage in CMP videos "True, but misleading."
As Media Matters points out, Vox, Politifact, the Washington Post, Politico, and ABC News all said Fiorina's claims were false.
Even though the videos shot by the Center for Medical Progress were edited and spliced together with misleading stock footage, that evidently isn't enough. The deceptively edited videos haven't roused enough outrage on their own so anti-abortion hardliners must resort to just making shit up.
This was far from the only thing Carly Fiorina lied about last night, but it stood out the most to me.