5 Massive Lies at the Democratic National Convention

9/2/24
 
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from Daily Signal,
8/22/24:

As Democrats nominated Vice President Kamala Harris in Chicago this week, speakers repeated multiple blatant falsehoods. The legacy media seems unlikely to expose these lies, so The Daily Signal will break them down here.

Each lie framed former President Donald Trump—the Republican nominee—and his party as more radical than they really are, or shifted responsibility to them for the Biden-Harris administration’s record on key issues such as inflation.
1. A Nationwide Abortion Ban. Multiple speakers, including the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, claimed that Trump or the GOP would pass a nationwide ban on abortion. Trump has pledged not to cut Social Security and Medicare, and he has repeatedly stated his opposition to a nationwide abortion ban. He says he supports states making their own laws on abortion, as the Supreme Court allowed when it overturned 1973’s Roe v. Wade decision with 2022’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

As president, Trump supported a national ban on abortion after 20 weeks gestation, and earlier this year, he suggested he might support banning abortion at the 15- or 16-week mark.

Since April, however, he has stated that he would leave abortion legislation “up to the states” and insisted that he wouldn’t sign a national ban even if Congress passed one.

2. Trump Would Ban In Vitro Fertilization. Multiple Democratic leaders suggested that Trump would ban in vitro fertilization, a fertility treatment in which a man’s sperm and a woman’s eggs are fertilized in a dish and then doctors implant one or multiple embryos inside a woman’s uterus. The IVF process often involves the creation of several human embryos that may never be used, raising ethical questions.

After the Alabama Supreme Court ruling, Trump strongly defended IVF.

“We want to make it easier for mothers and fathers to have babies, not harder,” he said. “That includes supporting the availability of fertility treatments like IVF in every state in America.”

“I strongly support the availability of IVF for couples who are trying to have a precious little beautiful baby,” Trump added. “I support it.” He went on to call on the Alabama Legislature to act to support IVF, and it did so with the legislation above.

3. Project 2025. Many speakers condemned Project 2025, an initiative led by The Heritage Foundation in partnership with over 100 other conservative organizations. The project, a policy blueprint for a future conservative presidential administration, offered to work with any political campaign open to supporting those policies. Heritage and its allies launched the project in April 2023, before Trump had won the Republican nomination. And while many Project 2025 staff had worked in Trump’s administration, the project did not consult with Trump or any other Republican candidate in drafting the document.

Even so, Democrats repeatedly introduced Project 2025 at the convention as “Trump’s plan.”

neither Trump nor the Republican Party have adopted Project 2025, and the project merely aims to bring the bureaucracy back under the control of the people’s elected president, not make him a “dictator.” Project 2025 would enable the president to fire certain administrative staff who oppose his or her agenda, bringing the federal bureaucracy back in line with the Founders’ vision for the executive branch.

Project 2025 does not undermine the Constitution, but rather aims to bring the executive branch back in line with the Constitution after the growth of independent agencies, federal government unions, and new regulations insulated it from the people’s elected president, making possible a “deep state” (where people who are answerable to the president under Article II of the Constitution nonetheless blatantly oppose his policies from within his administration).

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said… On page 562, it says that Donald Trump could use an obscure law from the 1800s to single-handedly ban abortion in all 50 states, even putting doctors in jail,” Polis said. Page 562 does not mention banning abortion in all 50 states, but it does mention laws preventing the distribution of abortion pills in the mail.

“Page 451 says the only legitimate family is a married mother and father where only the father works,” the governor added. Yet Page 451 says nothing of the sort. While it does mention the importance of a father in the home, it never suggests or implies that mothers cannot or should not work outside the home.

4. Book Banning

Speakers repeatedly brought up another familiar talking point, accusing Republicans of banning books. Leftists crafted this talking point to oppose leaders in the parental rights movement who objected to sexualized and pornographic books in school libraries. Groups like Moms for Liberty oppose sexually explicit books in school libraries, but they are not demanding that publishers retract the books or that the government ban them.

Yet Democrats repeatedly condemned Trump and Republicans for “banning books.”

“Shutting down the Department of Education, banning our books—none of that will prepare our kids for the future,” former first lady Michelle Obama said Tuesday. “Demonizing our children for being who they are and loving who they love—look, that doesn’t make anybody’s life better.”

5. Greedflation. Harris has repeatedly suggested that the real culprit behind rising prices is corporate greed or “price gouging,” and this theme has repeatedly emerged at the DNC.

Shawn Fain, president of the United Automobile Workers union, echoed this talking point.

“Corporate greed turns blue-collar blood, sweat, and tears into Wall Street stock buybacks and CEO jackpots,” Fain declared. “It causes inflation. It hurts workers, it hurts consumers, and it hurts America.”

as Heritage Foundation Research Fellow EJ Antoni pointed out, there is a far more obvious culprit: government spending.

As Antoni noted, “One of the functions of money is that of a measuring tool. If a yardstick were to shrink from 36 inches down to just 30, it would take 120 of these shortened yardsticks to cover the distance of a football field, instead of 100. As the dollar has lost value, it takes more dollars to measure the value of the things we buy.”

While Americans feel the pain of inflation, so do businesses. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Businesses have gotten the short end of the stick,” Antoni explained. “The producer price index is used to measure inflation on the products and services businesses buy—sometimes called wholesale inflation—and that index has risen 17.5% since Biden took office. Conversely, the consumer price index, the widely cited metric for inflation faced by American families, is up 17.1% over that same time.”

“Businesses have actually been sheltering consumers from some cost increases in an effort to maintain market share and not lose customers,” he wrote. “That also explains why, according to the Biden administration’s Census Bureau, total corporate profits have fallen for the last six quarters after adjusting for inflation.”

“If alleged price gouging were really the cause of inflation, did businessmen magically become greedy when Biden took office?” Antoni asked. “Were corporations never greedy in the 40 years leading up to Biden’s inflationary expansion of government? Businesses haven’t even passed all their higher costs on to consumers; if they’re trying to be greedy, they’re doing it all wrong.”

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