Rep. Michele Bachmann says she was proud she “didn’t get anything wrong during the course of the debates” in her failed presidential run, except for the few times she didn’t get the facts right.
The Minnesota Republican made a return to the spotlight this week in a friendly interview at Virginia’s conservative Christian Patrick Henry College. After a gushing introduction in which Bachmann was referred to as a “principled reformer” and one of the heroes of a “Biblical worldview,” the Tea Party darling expounded upon a variety of topics, from her love of Beyoncé (“I thought she was good at the Superbowl”) to her fear of encroaching Sharia law (“there’s an effort to have the United States come under an Islamic state”).
And while reflecting on her presidential run, Bachmann boasted that she “didn’t get anything wrong during the course of the debates.” But as it turns out, that’s far from true. In fact, she’s even been wrong for claiming she’s right.
At a primary debate in December 2011, Bachmann claimed that statements she made in a previous debate were verified by Politifact. The fact-checking mavens responded by labeling this claim as “Pants on Fire.” Bachmann made so many false statements over the course of the 12 Republican presidential debates she participated in, that the AP’s fact-checking editor told the Washington Post, “We had to have a self-imposed Michele Bachmann quota in some of those debates.”
Bachmann admitted there were remarks she would have answered differently if given the chance: she wished she had gotten actor John Wayne’s birthplace right (she referred to the town that was home to serial killer John Wayne Gacy), and she wish she hadn’t wished Elvis a happy birthday on the day of his death…”Because I was right about all the others,” she added, half-jokingly.
But those comments were perhaps among the least egregious gaffes she made during her presidential campaign, which ended the day after a humiliating second-to-last place finish in the Iowa caucuses. There’s the claim that HPV vaccines could lead to mental retardation, a total falsehood that the American Association of Pediatrics said ” no scientific validity.” She also suggested that the Revolutionary War began in Lexington, New Hampshire (when it actually began in Lexington in neighboring Massachusetts).
So to say that her only gaffes were to get Elvis’ birthday and John Wayne’s birthplace wrong takes, as she would put it, a lot of “chootz-pah.”
To watch more of Bachmann’s interview, check out the video below:
Ayan Chatterjee
Ayan Chatterjee is a senior producer for MSNBC's "Deadline: White House"