Texas Sen. John Cornyn Uses Manipulated Video to Falsely Attack Opponent on Carbon Tax

Texas Sen. John Cornyn deployed manipulated video in a new campaign ad to misrepresent what his Democratic opponent, MJ Hegar, said about her position on a possible carbon tax.

According to a story in the San Antonio Current, Cornyn’s latest ad, which keys off a line Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said about “transitioning” away from the oil industry in the final debate, tries to portray Hegar as offering unanimous support for the policy of taxing carbon output.

The 30-second ad begins by falsely claiming Hegar, like Biden, has “pledged to destroy the Texas oil and gas economy.” Then, to back up this claim, Hegar is shown in a clip as audio of her plays saying “I support a carbon tax.” However, her lips clearly don’t sync up with her words during the beginning of the video.

And in fact, Hegar never made that statement in the original video, which came in an interview with Rolling Stone back in August. During that interview, Hegar’s actual words to contributing editor Jeff Goodell were much more nuanced. (The relevant portion begins at the 25:00-minute mark.)

I stand with the league of Conservation Voters and Sierra Club, who support a Carbon Tax but also understand it needs to be done in a way that doesn’t just pass the burden on to the middle class and to the lower middle class.

At no point did Hegar matter-of-factly say: “I support a carbon tax.”

When contacted for comment by the Dallas Morning News, the Cornyn campaign did not back down and instead defended its use of the misleading audio: “We did not change, in any way, the meaning of what MJ was saying,” a Cornyn spokesman said, notably not denying the audio had been manipulated. “MJ doesn’t get to repeatedly tout her support for a carbon tax and then get indignant when we use her own words calling attention to that support.”

Currently, the RealClearPolitics average rates the Texas senate race as “lean GOP” with Cornyn leading Hegar by 7.5 percentage points. But the massive early vote turnout in Texas, especially in Democratic strongholds like Houston and Austin, has scrambled the normal political conventional wisdom heading into Election Day.

Watch the videos above, via YouTube and Rolling Stone.