With Zero Evidence, CNN Links Carly Fiorina's Falling Numbers to Her Attack on Planned Parenthood

CNN New Day co-anchor Alisyn Camerota interviewed GOP candidate Carly Fiorina Thursday about her performance in Wednesday night’s Republican presidential primary debate. During the interview, Camerota steered the conversation to Planned Parenthood, and tried to link Fiorina’s falling poll numbers to the candidate’s attack on the abortion provider at the CNN debate.

Camerota brought up the Planned Parenthood sting videos released by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), accusing Fiorina of getting her facts wrong on the issue as well. Asked Camerota:

During the last debate, what people said was erroneous about what you said were about the Planned Parenthood sting videos. And that what came out afterwards was that there had been portions that had been edited. Do you change your opinion about those now?

Camerota was referring to the moment during the Sept. 16 GOP debate when Fiorina challenged Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to “watch a fully-formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking.” But nothing “came out” about Fiorina’s words after the debate that Planned Parenthood’s crisis management PR firm didn’t orchestrate. The people who called Fiorina’s statement “erroneous” were left-wing attack sites like Media Matters.

Fiorina seemed genuinely shocked that Camerota was still pushing Planned Parenthood’s crisis propaganda:

Wow, Alisyn, I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. Honestly. It’s clear now, it’s very clear that Planned Parenthood is harvesting body parts. So clear that they had to announce that they no longer take compensation for it. Honestly, this has been hashed and rehashed.

…

Is there no other issue of economic import to the middle class in the United States of America that you’d like to talk about this morning?

Cameron then claimed that unspecified “people” were saying that Fiorina’s Planned Parenthood comments at the CNN debate had caused her “loss of momentum”:

But that was the issue, that afterwards people went back at you about because they did feel as though those same videos had been edited. And some people, let me go on, even felt that is why your national poll numbers dipped. So I did want to get you on the record about that.

Fiorina responded incredulously:

Oh, well, that’s quite a theory.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHutNfLjn4Q

As all viewers of the actual video — did Camerota watch it? — would know, the footage of the “fetus on the table” in the seventh CMP video was not the actual aborted baby StemExpress employee Holly O’Donnell was referring to in the voiceover. The clip came from other footage of an aborted baby to illustrate O’Donnell’s vivid description. O’Donnell is clear that she is describing an incident she witnessed but did not record.

Obviously, O’Donnell wasn’t wearing a hidden camera while she was working at the Planned Parenthood clinic because she wasn’t a pro-life mole infiltrating the abortion industry while working for StemExpress. She was an employee who became increasingly troubled by what she was witnessing, quit, and ultimately decided to become a whistleblower to help expose it:

Holly was so devastated from her time at StemExpress that she ended up in therapy. She was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Her therapist was stunned at Holly’s story and noted that she had “never heard of a story like this.” Now we all get to hear her story.

Instead of listening, some have taken to shaming Holly.