WASHINGTON (AP) – Viewers of the second Republican presidential debate heard inflated claims about Planned Parenthood abortion practices and a dubious assertion by Donald Trump that he wasn’t interested in establishing casinos in Florida when anti-gambling Jeb Bush was running for and serving as governor.
Some of the claims in the debate Wednesday night and how they compare with the facts:
BUSH: “The one guy that had some special interests that I know of that tried to get me to change my views on something – that was generous and gave me money – was Donald Trump. He wanted casino gambling in Florida.”
TRUMP: I didn’t. … Totally false….”
BUSH: “I’m not going to be bought by anybody.”
TRUMP: “I promise if I wanted it, I would have gotten it.”
THE FACTS: Trump’s hopes of expanding casino operations in Florida in the mid-1990s were well known at the time. Trump employed a prominent lobbyist to represent his gambling interests in Florida. And news report from that time show he hosted a fundraiser to help Bush’s campaign for governor and donated $50,000 to the Florida Republican Party during that campaign.
Bush did not bend in his opposition to casino gambling. It is not clear whether Trump approached Bush directly on the casino matter, but his interest in the enterprise is a matter of record.
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TEXAS SEN. TED CRUZ: “On these videos, Planned Parenthood also essentially confesses to multiple felonies. It is a felony with 10 years’ jail term to sell the body parts of unborn children for profit. That’s what these videos show Planned Parenthood doing.”
THE FACTS: The Center for Medical Progress released five videos showing furtively recorded conversations with Planned Parenthood officials, recorded by people posing as representatives of a fictitious private company that buys fetal tissue for researchers. In the videos, Planned Parenthood officials discuss how they obtain tissue from aborted fetuses for research, how they decide how much to charge and how it’s possible to alter the procedure to enhance the chances of recovering the organs being sought.
But the officials also repeatedly say they are only allowed by law to recover costs, not to make a profit. The videos don’t unambiguously show otherwise.