On "Fox & Friends" Tuesday morning, Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Utah Representative Jason Chaffetz discussed the upcoming appearance of Planned Parenthood's President Cecile Richards before the House's Oversight and Government Reform Committee, expounding on an argument seemingly designed to undermine itself -- claiming that Nancy Pelosi shouldn't call for an investigation into the edited videos because she hadn't seen the unedited ones, then admitting that they haven't seen them either.
Chaffetz, who is chairman of that committee, is attempting to defund Planned Parenthood in the wake of the "infant harvesting" scandal manufactured by the Center for Medical Progress.
As Hasselbeck herself noted, Richards' appearance will be "the first time an official for Planned Parenthood has testified since the organization was hurled into the national spotlight over those undercover, awful videos." The videos about which Hasselbeck is speaking are, of course, the edited versions released by the Center for Medical Progress earlier this summer.
Without indicating any shift in subject, however, she began to question Chaffetz about the unedited videos, asking him whether everyone who would be testifying at the hearing would be "have to see these [unedited] videos before putting forward their opinion." He replied that that wouldn't be possible, because a judge has put a temporary restraining order on them "so I do not yet have those [unedited] videos."
"It's fascinating," he continued, "that Nancy Pelosi comes to some conclusion having not seen the raw tape." Hasselbeck then played a clip of Pelosi admitting she hadn't seen the unedited videos.
"How irresponsible and aggravating is it when Nancy Pelosi asserts that these [edited] videos have been 'doctored' -- that word alone, spiking into my spine -- yet not having seen [the unedited videos], they need to be investigated?" Hasselbeck asked.
Chaffetz replied that the Democrats have "a political agenda, that they want their funding arm, which is Planned Parenthood, to get out the vote, and all the money that they transfer...to engage in these political activities. They want that funding to be there."
Neither she nor Chaffetz explained why it's acceptable to call a congressional hearing based on having only seen the edited videos, but it's "irresponsible and aggravating" to call for an investigation into the manner in which they were edited, as Pelosi did, on the basis of the same evidence.
Watch the entire interview below via Fox News.
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