August 7, 2015 / by emptywheel

 

Jeb Bush’s Service on Bloomberg Foundation Disappears into the Memory Hole [Updated: and Reappears!]

Update, 8/10: Time has a transcript, which was updated at 12:46 ET today, that includes the Bloomberg exchange. The exchange is also included in the broadcast available here now. Thanks to irootsorg for alerting me it is now available.

Ginalou made a remarkable discovery this morning. In the transcripts from last night’s debate that have been released thus far, the exchange where Megyn Kelly asks Jeb Bush about his service on the Bloomberg Foundation at a time when it supported Planned Parenthood (here’s an earlier report on it) has been scrubbed. The exchange should appear where it says “(COMMERCIAL BREAK)” here.

Screen Shot 2015-08-07 at 10.02.07 AM

Someone caught it in the YouTube above (though Fox will surely do a take-down of that). Fox appears only to be releasing selected clips of the debate, and this exchange is not included.

Here’s my transcription for posterity:

Kelly: Governor Bush, let’s start with you. Many Republicans have been outraged recently by a series of videos on Planned Parenthood. You now say that you support ending federal funding for this organization. However, until late 2014, right before you started your campaign, you sat on the board of a Bloomberg charity that quite publicly gave tens of millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood, while you were a Director. How could you not know about these well-publicized donations [a few boos] and if you did know, how could you help a charity so openly committed to abortion rights?

Bush: I joined the Bloomberg foundation because of Mike Bloomberg’s shared commitment for meaningful education reform. That’s why I was on it. We never had a debate about the budget. It was presented and we approved it. Not item by item. Here’s my record. As governor of the state of Florida, I defunded Planned Parenthood. [applause] I created a culture of life in our state. We were the only state to appropriate money for crisis pregnancy centers. We expanded dramatically the number of adoptions out of our foster care system. We created — we did parental notification laws. We ended partial birth abortion. We did all of this. And we were the first state to do a “choose life” license plate. Now 29 states have done it and tens of millions of dollars have gone to create  a culture where more people, more babies are adopted.

Kelly: But did you know?

Bush: [pause] No. I didn’t know. But it doesn’t matter. I was working on this board because of the education. My record is clear. My record as a pro-life governor is not in dispute. I am completely pro-life and I believe that we should have a culture of life, it’s informed by my faith from beginning to end. [big applause] And I did this not just as it related to unborn babies, I did it at the end-of-life issues as well. This is something that goes way beyond politics. And I hope one day that we get to the point where we respect life, in its fullest form, across the board. [applause]

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Originally Posted @ https://www.emptywheel.net/2015/08/07/jeb-bushs-service-on-bloomberg-foundation-disappears-into-the-memory-hole/