Glenn Beck took a break from pushing Egypt hysteria today to field a call from fringe right-wing activist Lila Rose for quite possibly the most dishonest ten minutes of radio you'll hear.
The impetus for Rose's call was her thoroughly discredited video hoax, where she falsely accuses Planned Parenthood of covering up child sex trafficking. Of course, Rose's videos prove no such thing. Moreover, her claim to have exposed Planned Parenthood for “covering up sex trafficking” is completely nonsensical: it is an undisputed fact that Planned Parenthood officials had already contacted law enforcement officials asking them to investigate potential sex trafficking.
Not once during his interview with Rose did Beck point out this fact - a fact that completely contradicts Becks' own claim that “Planned Parenthood now is being exposed” for illegally helping sex workers cover up the abuse of minors. They're not. Beck also claimed that the videos show that pimps can “trust the people at Planned Parenthood” to look the other way when confronted with evidence of sexual abuse. The videos don't in any way show this - which is evidenced by the fact that Planned Parenthood officials asked the FBI to investigate a possible sex trafficking ring.
I don't mean to be repetitive here, but this is pretty critical information that Beck is withholding.
Yet, despite Beck's willful deceit in not disclosing fully established facts that belie his claims, he was the least dishonest person in this interview.
Apropos nothing actually shown in a single video she has released, Lila Rose filibustered about the “harsh and brutal reality” that children of sexual abuse face, including being “locked in dog kennels” and “serially raped.” She then said:
So the idea that their pimps could be coming into Planned Parenthood clinics, walking in casually, doing business as usual with the staff even though he's self-proclaiming that he has these sex slaves, picking up a bag of condoms, walking back to the place where he's keeping his slaves captive and having them serially raped, and that Planned Parenthood can get away with that - that that's OK with people? I don't think that anyone would say that that's OK.
To be clear, in none of the videos has Lila Rose shown anybody - a real pimp, or an actor pretending to be a pimp - leaving a Planned Parenthood clinic and “walking back to the place where he's keeping his slaves captive and having them serially raped.” Nowhere. Lila Rose fabricated it to smear Planned Parenthood.
And Rose certainly can't establish that her videos show that Planned Parenthood OK with that - after all, THEY REPORTED POTENTIAL SEX TRAFFICKING OF MINORS.
Apparently trying to put her videos in the proper legal context, Rose said, “Planned Parenthood is a mandated reporter of sexual abuse.”
Now, it is abundantly clear from the facts that Planned Parenthood knows this: one of Planned Parenthood's employees actually informed Rose's make-believe pimp of the requirement to report on video - before Planned Parenthood contacted law enforcement to report potential sex trafficking and ask for an FBI investigation.
During the interview, Rose claimed that her latest videos are part of an “incredible rolling body of evidence” that “show beyond a shadow of a doubt” that Planned Parenthood has an “institutional,” “systematic,” and “endemic” problem, and that Planned Parenthood “from the top-down is supporting sexual abuse cover-up.”
In reality, Beck and Rose have a systematic problem with honesty. Tomorrow, Beck promises to bring Rose's outrageously dishonest smear job to his Fox News show, where he frequently pushes the laughable nonsense that he can't get away with lying on his Fox News show without getting fired.