Fox News' Malignant Distortion Of Michelle Obama

CHELSEA RUDMAN/Media Matters for America

Fox News is twisting comments Michelle Obama made to claim she said that voting for Republicans could cause people to "die from cancer." In fact,  the first lady was simply pointing out that repealing health care reform would increase the number of people without health insurance.

At a campaign event in Los Angeles on Monday, Michelle Obama discussed the presidential election andnoted calls from the right to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The first lady pointed out that the reform bill was in part an effort to expand health care access, including a hypothetical "woman dying of cancer whose insurance company wouldn't cover her care."

Here's Fox & Friends' sinister interpretation of Michelle Obama's comments:

CARLSON: Let's talk a little bit about Michelle Obama, the first lady, out on the campaign trail, and she was talking about this cancer ad, the controversial one, or was she?  Do you believe that she was insinuating back to that ad when she said that if you elect Mitt Romney, women will die from cancer?

MICHELLE MALKIN (Fox News contributor): Well, it's an interesting parallel -- it's an interesting echo of the ad's theme, of course, which is that somehow, if Republicans are elected to the White House, that all of these people are going to die, die, die.

Text aired during the segment read:

Later, on America's Newsroom, Fox News contributor Deroy Murdock said, "We've got President Obama's supporters and even Michelle Obama saying that if you vote for the Republicans, people will get cancer."

Fox did not make clear when Michelle Obama supposedly said this, but Carlson's commentary echoes aWashington Examiner post from August 13 highlighting comments Obama made at a campaign event that day. And in those comments, the first lady did not say that "if you vote for the Republicans, people will get cancer." The full context of her remarks shows that she was pointing out that prior to the passage of the Affordable Care Act, which conservatives have said they want to repeal, more people lacked health insurance:

But this election is also a choice about the health of our families.  Now, the fact is that over the past century -- all right, 100 years -- there have been so many Presidents who have tried and failed to meet the challenge of health care reform.  But fortunately your President was determined.  Fortunately he was driven by the stories of people he'd met.  We all know these stories -- the grandparents who couldn't afford their medications; the families going broke because a child got sick; the woman dying of cancer whose insurance company wouldn't cover her care.  And let me tell you something, that's what kept Barack going day after day.  That's why he fought so hard for this historic reform.