Winston Churchill once said, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”
GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump understands this quote well, which is why he says things that aren’t true and contradicts his own record with no fear of consequence.
{mosads}In 1999, during an interview with “Meet the Press,” Trump was asked about whether he would support a ban on partial-birth abortion, which takes place during the third trimester, should he become president of the United States. He responded by saying, “Look, I am very pro-choice. I hate the concept of abortion. I hate it. I hate everything it stands for. I cringe when I listen to people debating the subject, but still I just believe in choice.”
It should be noted that even in 1999, science showed third-trimester babies as viable and nearly fully developed human beings.
Fast-forward to today and Trump will tell you, as he repeatedly has on the campaign trail, that he is pro-life and has changed his position after evolving on the issue. But the billionaire’s current stance on Planned Parenthood suggests otherwise.
“It does do wonderful things, but not as it relates to abortion. There are wonderful things having to do with women’s health,” Trump said during the GOP debate in South Carolina a little over a week ago.
“They do good things,” Trump said during an interview with Sean Hannity six months ago. “A lot of women are helped, so we have to look at the positives also of Planned Parenthood.”
Trump has argued Planned Parenthood does good work, he just would rather it stop doing abortions and has argued taxpayer funding doesn’t go to abortion procedures in Planned Parenthood clinics. He’s also argued abortion is a “fairly small part of what they do,” when, in fact, abortion is Planned Parenthood’s most important revenue stream. This is the same argument Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards makes when she defends the abortion giant.
For decades, Planned Parenthood has come under fire not just for its abortion practices but also for a laundry list of unethical, immoral and illegal behavior.
A series of undercover video investigations over the years have repeatedly shown Planned Parenthood employees at clinics across the country allegedly attempting to cover up rape, the rape of minors, sex trafficking, the illegal sale of baby body parts for the sake of wanting a “Lamborghini,” going around parental consent laws for minors attempting to obtain an abortion and more. When Trump defends Planned Parenthood as doing “wonderful things,” he is condoning the organization. Even if Planned Parenthood didn’t do abortions, none of these “wonderful things” are worthy of taxpayer funding. But thanks to Trump, the lie of Planned Parenthood’s heroism has been further proliferated.
On another topic, last week Trump accused former President George W. Bush of intentionally lying about WMDs in order to invade Iraq. This is another proliferation of a completely false conspiracy theory.
Trump has been roundly rebuked by a number of scholars and historians who presented a series of facts and intelligence reports proving not only that Bush didn’t lie but that it is preposterous to suggest he did.
“According to the report issued by the Silberman-Robb Commission, a panel created in 2004 to investigate what went wrong, a major intelligence failure led to the wrong pre-war assessments of Iraq’s WMD. ‘The notion that Bush lied about intelligence to get [us] into war,’ Judge Silberman said, ‘is an absurd and outrageous libel,’ ” Commentary’s Peter Wehner recently reported. “Intelligence agencies from around the globe believed Saddam had WMD. In fact, even foreign governments that opposed his removal from power believed it.”
The Iraq moment during the debate was a perfect example of Trump’s tactic and use of falsehoods. He regularly throws out controversial assertions completely absent of fact and, in some cases, outright lies. Then, a few days later after the initial headlines featuring false information are buried under new ones, he backs off on his assertion without an apology and he certainly never corrects the record. The damage is done, the lie has been sent and the truth doesn’t get nearly as much attention.
To Trump’s supporters, none of this matters. Facts don’t matter. Convictions don’t matter. Principles don’t matter and conservative records certainly don’t matter. So long as Trump says the right things at the right time to the right crowds, he’ll never be held accountable for his doublespeak or for defending the very things the conservative movement has been fighting against for years.
Winston Churchill was right, especially when it comes to Donald Trump.
Pavlich is editor for Townhall.com and a Fox News contributor.