“Carly Fiorina Trips Over Fact, Fiction Distinction”: Caught Once Again Saying Something That Was Plainly Untrue
At this week’s Republican presidential debate, Carly Fiorina hoped to get her struggling campaign back on track by pointing to her military bona fides:
“One of the things I would immediately do, in addition to defeating [U.S. enemies] here at home, is bring back the warrior class – Petraeus, McChrystal, Mattis, Keane, Flynn. Every single one of these generals I know. Every one was retired early because they told President Obama things that he didn’t want to hear.”
For Fiorina, it was a two-fer – she could boast about personal connections with top U.S. military brass while simultaneously condemning President Obama for dismissing generals who disagreed with him.
The problem, of course, was that Fiorina wasn’t telling the truth. David Petraeus, for example, didn’t retire because of a conflict with the president; he retired from the military to become the CIA director, but was forced to quit after a sex scandal in which he shared classified information with his mistress.
As Rachel noted on the show last night, the even more striking example is retired Gen. Jack Keane, who retired in 2003 – when Obama was still a state senator. The idea that Keane, who has never even met this president, was forced out of the military because of a disagreement with Obama doesn’t make any sense. Keane said as much during a Fox News interview yesterday.
But that’s not the funny part. What makes Fiorina such a bizarre presidential candidate is how she handled the follow-up questions the day after the debate.
Talking with reporters Wednesday after a town hall here, Fiorina was asked if she misspoke about Keane given the timing of his retirement.
“No, I didn’t misspeak,” she said. “But he has been someone of great experience who has been highly critical of the way this administration has not taken threats seriously and unfortunately he hasn’t been listened to. I would listen to him.”
The CNN headline on its piece read, “Despite facts, Carly Fiorina stands by claim about retired generals.”
It would have been easy for Fiorina, less than a day removed from the debate, to say she accidentally referenced Keane, but that’s just not how she likes to campaign. The same thing came up in September, when Fiorina was caught lying about Planned Parenthood, but instead of walking back her bogus claims, the Republican insisted that fiction is fact.
To be sure, Fiorina isn’t the only presidential hopeful to have been caught saying things that aren’t true. But she is the only national 2016 candidate to respond to incidents like these in such a ridiculous way.
As we discussed in September, Americans can learn a lot about presidential candidates by reviewing their records and proposals, but how they respond to challenges tells us something important, too. In this case, a candidate for national office was caught once again saying something that was plainly untrue, which in turn created a test: how would Carly Fiorina defend a lie? What would her defense tell us about her readiness for national office?
The answers should be alarming for her campaign supporters.
Indeed, in recent months, as Fiorina has seen her poll numbers steadily collapse, there’s been quite a bit of chatter about how the Republican businesswoman managed to fall so far, so quickly. There’s more than one explanation for her failures, but incidents like these are a reminder about Fiorina herself creating doubts about her preparedness for the White House.
Disclosure: My wife works for Planned Parenthood, but she played no role in this piece.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, December 17, 2015
“There Was One Clear Loser”: Reality Takes A Beating In Latest Republican Debate
Early on in last night’s debate, Republican presidential hopeful Ben Carson was asked whether he’d support an increase in the minimum wage. The retired right-wing neurosurgeon began his answer by saying, “People need to be educated on the minimum wage,” which quickly became one of the more ironic comments of the evening.
“Every time we raise the minimum wage, the number of jobless people increases. It’s particularly a problem in the black community. Only 19.8 percent of black teenagers have a job, who are looking for one. You know, and that’s because of those high wages. If you lower those wages, that comes down.
“You know, I can remember, as a youngster – you know, my first job working in a laboratory as a lab assistant, and multiple other jobs. But I would not have gotten those jobs if someone had to pay me a large amount of money.”
The assertion that minimum wage increases are always followed by an increase in unemployment is wrong. Carson’s claim about unemployment among black teens is even further from the truth. And as for the minimum wage when Carson was younger, in 1975, when he was 24 years old, the minimum wage was $2.10 an hour – which is $9.29 when adjusted for inflation, more than two dollars above today’s wage floor.
It was, alas, that kind of event. There’s always considerable chatter about who “wins” or “loses” these debates – most pundits seem to think Marco Rubio excelled, though I’m starting to think some of them are just using a computer macro to save time – but there was one clear loser last night: reality.
At another point last night, Gerard Baker, the editor in chief of the Wall Street Journal, reminded Carly Fiorina, “In seven years under President Obama, the U.S. has added an average of 107,000 jobs a month. Under President Clinton, the economy added about 240,000 jobs a month. Under George W. Bush, it was only 13,000 a month. If you win the nomination, you’ll probably be facing a Democrat named Clinton. How are you going to respond to the claim that Democratic presidents are better at creating jobs than Republicans?”
If anything, Baker’s numbers were tilted in the GOP’s favor, since Obama’s totals are dragged down by including the early months of his presidency, when the economy was in free fall. Nevertheless, the point is accurate – since World War II, more jobs are created under Democratic presidents than Republicans – prompting Fiorina to reply, “Yes, problems have gotten much worse under Democrats.”
She’d just been reminded of the opposite, which made the exchange a little unnerving. I kept waiting for one of the candidates to drop the pretense and declare, “I reject this version of reality and replace it with one I like better.”
Around the same time last night, Marco Rubio insisted the United States is in the midst of “an economic downturn,” which is bonkers. The economy added over 270,000 jobs last month, the unemployment rate is down to 5%, and we have the strongest economy of any democracy on the planet.
Some dissembling is expected in events like these, and I hardly expect GOP presidential hopefuls to celebrate Obama-era progress, but for two hours last night, viewers were treated to a rare sight: a view of current events distorted by a funhouse mirror.
Towards the end of the evening, there was also this amazing exchange between Maria Bartiromo and Rand Paul:
BARTIROMO: Senator Paul, you were one of 15 Republicans to vote for an amendment which states that human activity contributed to climate change. President Obama has announced an aggressive plan to cut carbon emissions. At the same time, energy production in America has boomed. Is it possible to continue this boom, and move toward energy self-sufficiency, while at the same time pursuing a meaningful climate change program?
PAUL: The first thing I would do as president is repeal the regulations that are hampering our energy that the president has put in place.
She had just noted that energy production has boomed in the Obama era, which led Rand Paul to denounce the regulations that have prevented a boom in energy production.
I can appreciate why “Presidential Candidates Lie To Win Votes” is a dog-bites-man headline, but last night wasn’t so much about dishonesty as it was about feeling stuck in a “Twilight Zone” episode. Jon Chait concluded, “In a debate where chastened moderators avoided interruptions or follow-ups, the candidates were free to inhabit any alternate reality of their choosing, unperturbed by inconvenient facts.”
It was hard to know whether to be annoyed or terrified.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, November 11, 2015
“A Sad Window Into Our Political Dysfunction”: 3 Peerless Republicans For President; Trump, Carson And Fiorina
The leading contenders for the Republican nomination for president tell us three interesting things about America.
First, many G.O.P. voters are so disenchanted they’re willing to entrust the country to candidates — Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina — with zero experience in elective office or military command. Only two men without previous time in major elective office or the military have been president, Herbert Hoover and William Howard Taft, and both had held cabinet posts. No president has ever been as inexperienced as any of these three leading Republican candidates.
Second, the public feels an odd awe for C.E.O.s and presumes they know how to run things, even if their records suggest otherwise. This cultural reverence for C.E.O.s perhaps also explains why pay packages have increased — and why Fiorina was allowed to take home a $21 million severance package after she was fired as Hewlett-Packard’s chief executive for incompetence.
Third, the only kind of welfare that carries no stigma in America is corporate welfare. For all Trump’s criticisms of government, his family wealth came from feeding at the government trough. His father, Fred Trump, leveraged government housing programs into a construction business; the empire was founded on public money.
My bet is that Trump, Fiorina and Carson will fade, and that voters will eventually turn to a more conventional candidate, perhaps Senator Marco Rubio. From the Democrats’ point of view, the scariest Republican ticket might pair Rubio with John Kasich. Rubio has natural political skills, projects youth and change, and would signal that the Republican Party is ready to expand its demographic base. Rubio and Kasich would also have a decent chance of winning their home states, Florida and Ohio — and any ticket that could win Florida and Ohio would be a strong contender.
But instead, Republican primary voters for now are pursuing a bizarre flirtation with three candidates who are the least qualified since, well, maybe since Trump put his toe in the waters before the 2000 election.
In that sense, they offer a window into the American psyche — part of which is our adulation of the C.E.O.
There’s something to be said for C.E.O.s’ entering politics: In theory, they have management expertise and financial savvy. Then again, it didn’t work so well with Dick Cheney.
More broadly, the United States has overdone the cult of the C.E.O., partly explaining why at the largest companies the ratio of C.E.O. compensation to typical worker pay rose from 20 to one in 1965 to 303 to one in 2014, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
In any case, even if you were conducting a job search for a great C.E.O. to lead the free world, you wouldn’t turn to either Trump or Fiorina.
My sense is that Trump isn’t the idiot that critics often claim (the most common words voters used to describe him in a recent poll were “idiot,” “jerk,” “stupid” and “dumb”). This is a man who is near the top of diverse fields: real estate, book writing, television and now presidential politics. He’s a born showman, a master of branding and marketing. But he doesn’t seem a master of investing.
Back in 1976, Trump said he was worth “more than $200 million.” If he had simply put $200 million in an index fund and reinvested dividends, he would be worth $12 billion today, notes Max Ehrenfreund of The Washington Post. In fact, he’s worth $4.5 billion, according to Forbes.
In other words, Trump’s business acumen seems less than half as impressive as that of an ordinary Joe who parks his savings in an index fund.
An index fund might also have been less ethically problematic. In the 1970s, the Justice Department accused Trump of refusing to rent to blacks. And in 2013, New York State’s attorney general sued him, alleging “persistent fraudulent, illegal and deceptive conduct”; Trump denied the charges.
If Trump’s performance as a business executive was problematic, Fiorina’s was exceptional. Exceptionally bad.
Put aside the fact that she’s the C.E.O. who fired thousands of workers while raking in more than $100 million in compensation and pushing H.P. to acquire five corporate jets. Just looking at the bottom line, she earned her place on those “worst C.E.O.” lists she appeared on.
As Steven Rattner wrote in The Times, Hewlett-Packard’s share price fell 52 percent in the nearly six years she was at the helm. H.P. did worse than its peers: IBM fell 27.5 percent, and Dell, 3 percent.
Oh, and on the day she was fired, the stock market celebrated: H.P. shares soared 7 percent.
If I wanted a circus ringmaster, I’d hire Trump. If I wanted advice on brain surgery or hospital management, I’d turn to Carson. Fiorina would make an articulate television pundit. But for president?
The fact that these tyros are the three leading presidential contenders for a major political party is a sad window into our political dysfunction.
By: Nicholas Kristof, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, October 8, 2015
“Is Carson Losing His Teflon Shield?”: The Kid-Gloves-Treatment Of Carson Could Be Coming To An End
Up until now, Dr. Ben Carson has had an extraordinarily charmed existence on the presidential campaign trail. Even though his world-view is weird and John Birchie, political reporters either don’t notice it or don’t think it’s important. Fellow GOP candidates give him a wide berth, and conservative activists tend either to adore him or only talk about his positive qualities.
Some of this is undoubtedly a byproduct of the party-wide obsession with bringing Donald Trump down to earth; since Carson seems to have some of the same “outsider” appeal as The Donald, the Republican Establishment is happy to promote him at Trump’s expense. And above all, the mental identification of Carson with Herman Cain–you know, another unqualified African-American conservative who had his 15 minutes of fame before retreating to obscurity–seems to exert a powerful influence on attitudes towards Carson, even though it is extremely unlikely the doctor is going to succumb to a sex scandal.
Anyway, this kid-gloves-treatment of Carson could be coming to an end, if WaPo’s Jennifer Rubin is any indication:
Donald Trump wants to round up 11 million people in two years for deportation. He approves of Russia’s incursion into Syria. He has a tax plan that adds at least $10 trillion to the debt. And with all that, he is not the most ignorant or unfit GOP presidential contender. That distinction goes to Ben Carson.
Wow, how’s that for an opening shot?
Rubin proceeds to recite the many examples of Carson showing he doesn’t know much about various subjects from the composition of NATO to the history of the Holocaust, and then turns to her fellow Republicans with justified scorn:
Conservatives have a dangerous habit of excusing ignorance or offensive comments so long as they come from someone attacking liberal elites. One does not need to elevate ignoramuses to cultlike status simply because they also happen to attack the media or liberal dogma. In doing so, Republicans wind up getting behind crank candidates and losing elections to mediocre candidates. (Anyone recall the “I-am-not-a-witch” Christine O’Donnell?)
There is a Chauncey Gardner-like quality to Carson. He speaks softly, smiles a lot and lulls his audience into the belief he possess great insights and wisdom. He is an esteemed neurosurgeon and a lovely dinner speaker. He is, however, entirely unfit for the presidency, seemingly oblivious to basic historical facts, constitutional concepts and world events. Surely conservative Republicans, especially some in the right-wing media who have fawned over him, should have figured this out by now.
This kinda makes me wish Rubin would take a similarly jaundiced look at Carly Fiorina. But hell no! She may soon be head of the DC branch of Fiorina’s fan club. Guess somebody else will at the appropriate moment have to point out that this isn’t a candidate anyone would take seriously if she wasn’t useful in bashing the “liberal elites” with a first name of Hillary and a last name of Clinton.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, October 9, 2015
“A Flagrant Liar For President?”: Darling Fiorina Is Not Only A Relentless Self-Promoter, But Also A Remorseless Liar
We’ve got a new darling in the GOP presidential race: Carly Fiorina!
Being the darling du jour, however, can be dicey — just ask Rick Perry and Scott Walker, two former darlings who are now out of the race, having turned into ugly ducklings by saying stupid things. But Fiorina is smart, sharp witted, and successful. We know this because she and her PR agents constantly tell us it’s so. Be careful about believing anything she says, though, for Darling Fiorina is not only a relentless self-promoter, but also a remorseless liar.
Take her widely hailed performance in the second debate among Republican wannabes, where she touched many viewers with her impassioned and vivid attack on Planned Parenthood. With barely contained outrage, Fiorina described a video that, she said, shows the women’s health organization in a depraved act of peddling body parts of an aborted fetus. “Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking,” said a stone-faced Fiorina, looking straight into the camera, “while someone says, ‘We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.’”
Oh, the horror, the monstrosity of Planned Parenthood! And how moving it was to see and feel the fury of this candidate for president!
Only … it’s not true. Although she dared the audience, President Obama and Hillary Clinton to go watch it, turns out that there is no such video — no fetus with kicking legs and no demonic Planned Parenthood official luridly preparing to harvest a brain.
So did Fiorina make up this big, nasty lie herself, or did her PR team concoct it as a bit of showbiz drama to burnish her right-wing credentials and advance her political ambition? Or maybe she’s just spreading a malicious lie she was told by some vicious haters of Planned Parenthood. Either way, there’s nothing darling about it, much less presidential.
I remember back in 1992 when the third-party candidate Ross Perot chose Admiral James Stockdale, a complete unknown, to be his presidential running mate. In his first debate, the vice presidential candidate began by asking a question: “Who am I? Why am I here?”
We should be asking the same about Carly, as she has recently surged in the polls of GOP primary voters. Her campaign is positioning her as a no-nonsense, successful corporate chieftain who can run government with businesslike efficiency. During the debate, Fiorina rattled off a list of her accomplishments as CEO of Hewlett-Packard, the high-tech conglomerate: “We doubled the size of the company, we quadrupled its topline growth rate, we quadrupled its cash flow, we tripled its rate of innovation,” she declared in PowerPoint style.
Statistics, however, can be a sophisticated way of lying. In fact, the growth she bragged about was mostly the result of her buying Compaq, another computer giant in a merger that proved to be disastrous — in fact, Hewlett-Packard’s profits declined 40 percent in her six years, its stock prices plummeted and she fired 30,000 workers, even saying publicly that their jobs should be shipped overseas. Finally, she was fired.
Before we accept her claim that “running government like a business” would be a positive, note that the narcissistic corporate culture richly rewarded Fiorina for failure. Yes, she was fired, but unlike the thousands of HP employees she dumped, a golden parachute was provided to let her land in luxury — counting severance pay, stock options, and pension, she was given $42 million to go away.
But here she comes again, lacking even one iota of humility. Fiorina is throwing out a blizzard of lies, not only about Planned Parenthood, but also about who she is. She’s the personification of corporate greed and economic inequality, and she’s trying to bamboozle Republicans into thinking she belongs in the White House.
By: Jim Hightower, The National Memo, October 7, 2015
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