Tucker Carlson pulled a Fox News twofer by suggesting that if Planned Parenthood gets federal dollars, so should the NRA!
“Pro-life” Carlson hates Planned Parenthood so much, he is willing to attack them with anti-choice lies and propaganda.
Carlson began his attack against a big graphic that, above the Planned Parenthood graphic, read “Spending Tax Dollars” – a not so subtle reference to the right-wing myth that tax dollars are spent on abortion. He suggested that if the GOP can’t rally its base, in upcoming elections, it’s because of “failing to fulfilling its promises” such as defunding Planned Parenthood.
He whined about how Planned Parenthood gets lots of “taxpayer dollars every year” and asked if the Democrats “would be OK” if the NRA (which doesn’t provide vital health care) got the same amount of money. He introduced his guest, Republican Congresswoman Diane Black who is virulently anti-choice and who is running for the Tennessee governorship in the next election.
Carlson immediately got down to business by asking Black about her opposition to funding Planned Parenthood which he called “an adjunct of the Democratic Party.” He asked why Republicans haven’t stopped funding the organization.
Black replied that while the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has sent such a bill to the Senate, the Senate “hasn’t done their work.” She encouraged viewers to call their senators and urge them to pass the bill.
Carlson invoked the tax-dollar argument in advancing his attack: “I don’t even think you need to be pro-life or opposed to abortion. I am. But even if you weren’t, you would say, ‘Well, Planned Parenthood is part of the Democratic Party.” Cecile Richards, who ran it until recently, spoke at the 2016 Democratic Convention. They’re getting a half-a-billion dollars of tax money involuntarily from the rest of us to campaign for Democratic candidates.” He gasped, “How is that even Constitutional?”
WARNING, TUCKER CARLSON LIE: Planned Parenthood uses NO tax money for its political activities. The operational arm of Planned Parenthood “receives federal funding and cannot take part in electoral activities.” Its political arm, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, is “registered as a 501©(4), which is a social welfare organization that is allowed to engage in political activity.”
Reinforcing Carslon’s lie and the GREAT, BIG GOP LIE that taxpayer monies pay for abortion, Black added, “They shouldn’t even be using their money for that, but they do raise additional dollars through the communities. And that’s fine if they want to spend their money that way, but we don’t need to be having taxpayer dollars going to abortion, period.”
In case you didn’t get the message, she added the anti-choice talking point that “abortion is not family planning, it’s family destruction” – a talking point that dismisses the economic concerns of women/families who can’t afford to raise another child
She repeated the GREAT, BIG GOP LIE: “We should not even be giving them a single penny if they are providing abortions.”
Carlson provided validation: “Right, it’s a self-reinforcing loop, they lobby to keep their funding in place so they keep getting funding. It’s infuriating.
He continued:
“If you going to figure out a way to get taxpayers to pay for one of your biggest political supporters to campaign for you, then why aren’t Republicans saying the NRA, which trains a ton of law enforcement, and military; trains everybody guarding our nuclear power facilities, for example, why don’t they get half-a-billion dollars a year in federal money to do the good work that they do?”
Black advanced that GREAT, BIG GOP LIE that federal money pays for abortion when, per the Hyde Amendment, it doesn’t: “But I simply say take [the dollars] away from them until they can show that not a single dollar in their clinics are being used for abortions, neither are they giving money to those organizations that provide abortions.”
Carlson expressed hope for the eventual defunding of Planned Parenthood.
Wonder if Carlson realizes that Teen Vogue’s Lauren Duca’s on-air argument with Carlson about Planned Parenthood, helped her raise lots of money for the organization?!
Watch the GREAT, BIG GOP LIES below, from the March 12, 2018 Tucker Carlson Tonight.
It’s a career path followed by so many less-than-gifted individuals across a wide spectrum of activities – ‘Christian’ music and comedy (there is a thriving circuit of itinerant stand-ups getting $1,500 a pop for ‘guest preaching’), semi-literate ‘journalists’, commercial artists – even car painters and plumbers can build up a very handy business by giving the appearance of piety and mouthing the approved nutwing opinions.
I always wonder which are true believers, and which are there for the easy bucks.
There’s actually more than two big lies here. Although the first two are plenty big enough for one broadcast. No, Planned Parenthood does not use federal funds as PAC contributions. That’s called a felony – although one would think Carlson should know something about the area as a look into the illegal use of campaign funds and illegal influence are a major part of the Pence White House’s current panic about Robert Mueller. And no, Planned Parenthood does not use federal funds for abortion procedures. Those funds are raised as a separate matter. Of course, the Right Wing would like you to believe the lie that all the money in any organization is “fungible” and thus every single dollar held by Planned Parenthood must be deemed to be applicable to abortion.
I’d love to see Right Wingers take that “fungible” argument and apply it to their taxable income, since they take advantage of every deduction they can as wealthy individuals. And maybe they’d like to apply “fungible” to all the scenarios where they’ve had supposedly rogue campaign operatives doing and saying vicious things on their behalf. But maybe “fungible” only applies if it’s something the Right Wing doesn’t like.
The other big lie going on here is a not-so-subtle attempt by the Right to reframe family planning as a discussion of murder rather than a discussion of a woman having the right to choose whether or not she’s going to take a fetus to tem. It’s not murder for a woman to stop a pregnancy, and it’s frankly despicable for the Right Wing to keep trying to play this card. It’s a medical procedure, used many times for health reasons, and also used for appropriate economic reasons and other reasons that are the business of the women and not of Tucker Carlson or his guests. Attacking Planned Parenthood is a favorite game of these people, partly because it’s a first step toward accomplishing the larger goal – that of making any abortion procedure illegal and impossible to obtain. One has to wonder where they think all these babies are going to go. Or if they believe instead that millions of people are simply going to abstain because the Right Wing hypocritically tells them to. (This while so many Right Wingers keep getting caught in their own peccadillos…)