Fact checking the GOP debate in Orlando

By Glenn Kessler
WashPost

Another lengthy presidential debate, and more bogus claims and counterclaims to check. Let’s see what the candidates got wrong this time at last night’s debate in Orlando, Fla., hosted by Fox News, Google and the Republican party of Florida:

Question: “Do you stand by your statement that the HPV vaccine is potentially dangerous, and if not, should you be more careful when you’re talking about a public health issue?”

Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.): “Well, first, I didn’t make that claim, nor did I make that statement. Immediately after the debate, a mother came up to me, and she was visibly shaken and heartbroken because of what her daughter had gone through, and so I only related what her story was.”

Bachmann, in trying to spin her way out of a political problem, is simply not telling the truth here. The transcript of her interview on the NBC Today Show shows that Bachmann not only called the vaccine “potentially be a very dangerous drug” but she made this statement before she ever mentioned the distraught mother.

Here’s the relevant part of the transcript:

REP. BACHMANN: Well, it’s very clear that crony capitalism could have likely been the cause, because the governor’s former chief of staff was the chief lobbyist for this drug company. This was an issue that could have gone before the legislature. But rather than putting it before hearings and before the legislature, the governor chose, by himself, unilaterally, to sign an executive order and put through the requirement that all innocent little 12-year-old girls or 11-year-old girls in the state of Texas would be forced by the government to take an injection of what could potentially be a very dangerous drug.

(More here.)