PBS’s coverage of Tuesday night’s Trump-Harris debate included live fact-checking from its partner PolitiFact, which has racked up a liberally slanted record. But when Harris falsely claimed Trump had promised a “bloodbath,” no one at PBS or PolitiFact corrected her.
PolitiFact didn’t award Harris a False rating on its Truth-O-Meter for that lie (and went very soft on her otherwise), instead making do with a neutral tweet, and not even mentioning it in its debate roundup. It merely tweeted:
Harris said Trump said "there will be a bloodbath" if the "outcome of this election is not to his liking." In an Ohio speech in April, Trump criticized Biden’s plans for electric vehicles. He called out China for building manufacturing plans in Mexico and promised to put a 100% tariff on cars crossing the border.
PBS has made the same fake "bloodbath" claim on numerous occasions.
Then it was on to abortion, when Donald Trump claimed “radical” Democrats were in favor of “executing” babies after birth.
Trump: “….you can look at the governor of West Virginia [sic], the previous governor of West Virginia [sic], not the current governor is doing an excellent job, but the governor before he said, the baby will be born and we will decide what to do with the baby, in other words, we’ll execute the baby -- and that’s why I did that, because that predominates, because they’re radical, the Democrats are radical in that,”
PolitiFact rated Trump’s “execute the baby” comment “False,” which itself was falsely confident in giving Northam’s rambling response the benefit of the doubt. PolitiFact huffed:
Former Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat and a physician, never said he would sanction the execution of newborns….Trump puts words in the then-governor’s mouth, saying doctors would urge the mother to let them forcibly kill the newborn….
Context: Virginia’s then-Democratic governor Ralph Northam was doing a live radio interview with D.C.’s WTOP in January 2019. The host asked the governor to explain what Fairfax County Delegate Kathy Tran meant when she said her bill to lift restrictions on third-trimester abortions would permit an abortion even if a woman was ready to give birth. Here's what the former governor said:
Northam: ….it's done in cases where there may be severe deformities, there may be a fetus that's non-viable….The infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if that's what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother. So I think this was really blown out of proportion….
Later on debate night, PBS News' digital producer Deema Zein hosted a post-debate chat on YouTube with PBS political reporters Laura Barron-Lopez and Lisa Desjardins. Trump’s “execute the baby” comment came up again.
Zein forwarded a reader question about Trump’s “claims that executing babies after birth is allowed under Democrats.” Barron-Lopez seemed ignorant of the Northam context Trump had clearly been using.
Laura Barron-Lopez: It’s not true that Democrats support or that there is any execution of babies by any means whatsoever. I mean it’s a ludicrous claim and it’s just not true and Donald Trump and Republicans know that it’s not true and yet they continue to repeat it.
Desjardins agreed, paraphrasing debate moderator Linsey Davis saying “that it’s not legal in any state.”
Then the big news: Pop star endorses Harris!
Barron-Lopez: We did have some breaking news as we were going live right now and I just wanted to get it in, speaking of young voters and who could potentially help Harris rally them Taylor Swift don’t think she needs an introduction and explanation of who that is, but she endorsed Vice President Harris right after the debate, on Instagram.
Desjardins added an odd talking point, saying "Democrats are going to love" that Swift is playing concerts in Miami near Election Day.
Desjardins: And now she is not someone who has really brought politics usually into her shows. But her Eras tour is still going on, her next three dates, by the way, are the end of October or in the middle of October, in Florida. Now that’s now pretty a reddish, red state, but there are congressional races in that state, I think she’s going to be in Miami, there a congressional race right there that Democrats would love to see their folks supercharged, and her audience, a hundred-thousand people, that -- campaign is very hard of them to reach that kind of engaged audience in that way, so even just her presence there in Miami at that particular time after endorsing Biden [sic] is something Democrats are going to love.
As will PBS, no doubt.
