Rachel Maddow profiles the anti-abortion activist whose endorsement Ted Cruz is thrilled to have.
Tuesday evening Rachel Maddow delivered an excellent investigation into Ted Cruz and the endorsement he’s been touting of the man behind the Planned Parenthood videos – the same videos that have been thoroughly debunked, the same videos that have sparked investigations by several states into Planned Parenthood that have found exactly zero evidence of wrongdoing.
“Today, Presidential candidate Ted Cruz secured the endorsement of leading pro-life activist Troy Newman – a driving force in the recent effort to expose Planned Parenthood’s alleged sale of baby parts in a series of undercover videos,” Ted Cruz’s press release boasts. “Newman is the President of Operation Rescue, one of the most prominent pro-life Christian activist organizations in the nation. He also serves as a Board Member for a number of pro-life groups including the Center for Medical Progress.”
Maddow describes Newman as “the clinic-bomber’s co-author … who says that not just executing but also vigilante-murdering abortion doctors is at least, arguably, justifiable homicide.”
What Maddow is referring to was well-explained by Right Wing Watch last week, reporting which Maddow used in her segment.
“Newman argued in his 2003 book, ‘Their Blood Cries Out,’ that the biblical duty of government ‘rightly involves executing convicted murderers, including abortionists, for their crimes in order to expunge bloodguilt from the land and people,'” Right Wing Watch reported.
“Newman also wrote in his book that women who have abortions should be considered ‘a murderer’ just like ‘any other mother, killing any other family member.’ Along with Operation Rescue’s Cheryl Sullenger, who was once convicted of conspiring to bomb an abortion clinic, Newman later claimed that a man convicted of murdering an abortion provider should have been allowed to argue that the homicide was justified.”
And then, as Right Wing Watch also reported, there’s this:
Newman has claimed that the 9/11 terrorist attacks and AIDS were both warnings from God about legal abortion in America and attributed a drought in California to the state’s liberal abortion laws, insisting that “weather patterns†and economic instability are connected to legal abortion.
Stunning.
These are the types of people endorsing Ted Cruz, and worse, these are the types of people Cruz is not disavowing, but heralding in press releases, as if it were a good thing.
Watch Maddow’s excellent report above. You can also visit Right Wing Watch who just published a piece on Maddow’s reporting.
Â
Image: Screenshot via MSNBC