Friday’s New York Times continued to dubiously fact-check Donald Trump, this time on abortion, while positioning Hillary Clinton as a pro-choice heroine of women on the front page. Reporter Farah Stockman hailed Hillary as finally emerging as a champion for women under the eye-rolling headline “Clinton Arrives As a Crusader For All Women.” Even the women she slimed in defense of her sleazy husband?
In her debate on Wednesday with Donald J. Trump, Hillary Clinton for the first time emerged as the clarion-voiced advocate for women whom many liberal women had been longing for -- especially the younger voters she had largely left cold throughout the Democratic primaries.
Speaking on abortion rights, a defining issue for an older generation of feminists, Mrs. Clinton dispensed with Democrats’ longstanding caveat that the procedure should be rare, and strongly defended women’s right to control their own bodies without government interference.
More tellingly, Mrs. Clinton also seemed to speak to a new generation of women -- and to many young men -- by assailing Mr. Trump over sexual assault and harassment, saying his dismissals of the allegations against him by multiple women showed that he “thinks belittling women makes him bigger.”
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Perhaps the biggest boost she received, however, was one that neither she nor any army of political operatives could have engineered: when Mr. Trump interjected, “Such a nasty woman,” as Mrs. Clinton was discussing Social Security and taxes.
Overnight, his insult became a battle cry for Mrs. Clinton’s partisans -- including many whose passions she had not yet stirred. “Nasty Woman” T-shirts began selling on the internet. Naral Pro-Choice America advertised “NastyWoman” stickers. A New York City man quickly set up an expletive-laced “nasty women” website that redirected visitors to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign page. Streams of Janet Jackson’s 1986 hit “Nasty” increased 250 percent on Spotify after the debate, according to a Spotify spokesman. More than 8,000 people had taken up the phrase on Twitter by midafternoon, wielding it as a badge of honor.
A campaign that a day earlier had taken some ribbing over a leaked email showing that top aides churned through a list of more than 80 potential slogans -- many of them plodding and colorless -- suddenly seemed to be taking on the vitality of a grass-roots movement.
Also on Friday, reporter Pam Belluck did a dubious Trump fact-check on abortion. His position was called “Absurd” in the headline in the fair and balanced NYT: “‘Absurd’ Trump Errs On Abortion, Doctors Say.”
In the presidential debate Wednesday night, Donald J. Trump expounded on pregnancy and abortion, asserting that under current abortion law, “You can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month, on the final day.”
Doctors say the scenario Mr. Trump described does not occur.
“That is not happening in the United States,” said Dr. Aaron B. Caughey, chairman of obstetrics and gynecology at Oregon Health and Science University.
The paper's aversion to pro-life abortion language was clear.
Mr. Trump made his statements to condemn Hillary Clinton, who, as a senator, voted against a federal ban on late-term, or what critics call partial-birth, abortions.
Abortions that occur more than halfway through pregnancy are very rare in the United States, and many states have laws that add restrictions to the timing of abortions.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research organization that supports abortion rights, 1.3 percent of abortions in the United States occur at 21 weeks of pregnancy or later.
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Some of these laws are considered unconstitutional by abortion rights advocates, but their existence indicates that late-term abortion is extremely rare.
The Media Research Center’s Katie Yoder did her own fact-check on the media’s slanted fact-checking on Trump’s abortion statement. Yoder’s takedown of the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler applies to Belluck’s take as well:
Trump’s full sentence reads, “If you go with what Hillary is saying, in the ninth month, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother, just prior to the birth of the baby.”....Even without that acknowledgment, however, the claim that “you can take the baby and rip the baby right out of the womb, just prior to the birth of the baby” is correct. It “can” happen. It is legally allowed in certain states – seven states – that have no age or time restrictions....He also argued that “most abortions take place early in the pregnancy” and that “only 1.2 percent of abortions—about 12,000 a year– take place after 21 weeks.” (So even according to Kessler, late-term abortions “can” happen.)
Also on Friday, Alexander Burns engaged in some partisan hyperbole in “Trump’s Defiance Is Seen as Threat to U.S. Image.” There were aggressive Democratic attempts to overturn the 2000 election results, and conspiracy theories about the 2004 results – both wins by Republican George W. Bush – but Burns found no problem with the former and didn’t mention the latter:
It is a scene reminiscent of other countries and other times: An angry candidate defies the will of the voters and hurls venom at the democratic process. Threats of jail are issued against political opponents. There is even loose talk of armed insurrection.
With his assault on the legitimacy of the presidential election, Donald J. Trump threatens to touch off a humiliating spectacle unseen in the United States since the country became a global power.
Diplomats and elected officials in both parties fear that Mr. Trump, if he loses, will inflict grave trauma on the electorate and severely undermine the international reputation of an American political system known for revering the peaceful transfer of power.
