This morning on “Face the Nation,” Glenn Youngkin did his usual: lots of dodging and lying, in an attempt to soften or conceal his extreme policy positions.
- Basically admitted that the only reason he’s not pushing to completely ban abortion in Virginia is that Democrats control the State Senate. If Democrats lose the Senate next year, god forbid, then watch out!
- Said he believes “life begins at conception,” which of course implies a complete ban on abortion, as well as several forms of contraception, embryonic stem cell research, etc.
- Dodged on whether he’d ever support a “full ban” on abortion. For now, he’s for a “15-week pain threshold bill.” Except that, as this NPR fact check reports, “this contradicts widely accepted medical research from 2005. This study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, concluded that a fetus is not capable of experiencing pain until somewhere between 29 or 30 weeks. Researchers wrote that fetal awareness of pain requires ‘functional thalamocortical connections.’ Those thalamocortical fibers begin appearing between 23 and 30 weeks’ gestational age, but the capacity for pain perception comes later.” So yet again, Youngkin’s full of crap.
- Claimed that Democrats supposedly support abortion “all the way up through and including birth” (an apparent reference to Ralph Northam talking about a case where a fetus is “non viable” and has “severe deformities”). In fact, as this fact check finds, “Virginia Governor Ralph Northam was not supporting ‘infanticide.’ According to a spokeswoman, he was referring to a ‘extremely rare case’ of a nonviable pregnancy.”
- On whether or not he’d push to codify same-sex marriage in Virginia, he dodged and weaved, blathering about the Supreme Court returning these types of decisions to the states, then stating that “we actually do protect same-sex marriage in Virginia, that’s the law…and therefore as governor of Virginia, we protect same-sex marriage.” Huh? In fact, the Virginia constitution STILL BANS same-sex marriage, thanks to *REPUBLICANS* who put the ban in there and to the *REPUBLICANS* who blocked moves to amend the constitution in order to get it out of there!
- Asked about whether his PAC would support and spend money to help elect extremists/insurrections like Doug Mastriano for governor in Pennsylvania, Youngkin dodged, talks about electing Republican candidates for Congress (all of whom are extremists, by the way) in Virginia. Youngkin then dodged again on Mastriano, said “we’re still working on my agenda,” and flat-out lied that “there are states, like Virginia, where people recognize that a Democrat [sic] governor has not done a good job, and a Republican governor, like Republican governors all over America, can do a good job.” As Aaron Rupar tweeted, “Youngkin is an astoundingly slippery character. Check out how he dodges a question about whether he’ll help pro-coup Republicans win elections this November.” Slimier. Than. Whale. Shit.
By the way, Bob Costa of “Face the Nation” did try to pin Youngkin down, but not hard enough IMHO. Also, Costa and other journalists need to call out lies, in real time, and even stop interviews if the person they’re talking to keeps lying. But, of course, they won’t do that, because apparently they have whatever number of questions to get through, and also because they’re afraid if they “bark” at their guests (as Chuck Todd once admitted) they fear that the liars won’t come on their shows (would that really be a loss?).