Donald Trump is perpetuating a lie about Democrats supporting the “execution” of babies that originated in a dumb slip of the tongue from former Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam in a 2019 radio interview.
“It must be remembered that the Democrats are the radical ones are in this position because they support abortion up to and even beyond the ninth month, the concept of having an abortion in the later months, and even execution after birth. And that’s exactly what it is. The baby is born, the baby is executed after birth is unacceptable, and almost everyone agrees with that,” Trump said in a video that he posted to his massive money-losing social-media site on Monday.
The basis of this lie is that 2019 radio interview with Northam, who, as it happens, is a friggin’ pediatric neurologist, for chrissakes, in which Northam, who is often stricken when it comes to getting his points across in interviews, clumsily explained late-term abortions.
“There may be a fetus that’s nonviable. So, in this particular example, if a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen,” Northam told Washington radio station WTOP in the Jan. 30, 2019, interview. “The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”
Republicans, at the time, seized on the remarks as an indication of some hidden agenda of Democrats to kill live babies and call them abortions, which, of course, they knew they were being disingenuous when they feigned the outrage.
But then, here we are, five years later, and we have Trump still advancing the narrative.
Is this the right time to remind you that we were among the anybody and everybody who called on Northam to resign over the blackface yearbook photos scandal that literally came to light two days after the WTOP interview, and not only did anybody and everybody else but us back off, but Northam went on to grandstand his way through the final year and a half of his gubernatorial term as the COVID shutdown governor, setting the stage for Glenn Youngkin’s win in the 2021 governor’s race?
Meh, that’s water under the bridge.
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Chris Graham
