Rep. Ted Budd (R-NC) and Democrat Cheri Beasley faced off in what appears to be their first and last debate on Friday night, just four weeks from the highly competitive North Carolina U.S. Senate race.

In the hour-long debate hosted by Spectrum News 1, Budd and former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Beasley sparred about inflation, crime, immigration, social security, and national security, among other hot topics. But the most glaring part of the debate was Beasley’s repeated reference to several left-wing conspiracy theories, all of which have been debunked and are promulgated on the left for the sole purpose of instilling fear and stoking division.

False Claims About January 6

Beasley claimed not once, not twice, but three times during the debate that Budd supported rioters who “injured and killed hundreds of police officers and left Americans for dead” during the January 6 Capitol Riot. [Emphasis added]

Here are the three quotes from various parts of the debate:

The reality is, in 2020 for the election, Congressman Budd said, “just patriots standing up.” I mean, that’s what he called the mob that stormed the Capitol that injured and killed hundreds of police officers and left Americans for dead. [Emphasis added]

…

And talking about crime, I mean, the folks who were raiding the capitol, who stormed and endangered hundreds of law enforcement officers who were injured and killed. I mean, Congressman Budd is really all talk. He’s not trying to keep us safe. [Emphasis added]

…

And did he think that the heroes at the Capitol who were injured and and killed by this mob that he called patriots, were those law enforcement officers heroes? [Emphasis added]

Beasley’s claim is false. While some rioters attacked police, they did not kill any. The only person killed was Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed by law enforcement officers as she tried to climb through a broken window into the House of Representatives.

As Breitbart News previously reported, three other protesters died of unrelated causes. One capitol officer, Brian Sicknick, passed away after the Capitol riot, but his death was not caused by the riot, as the media initially claimed, but rather by natural causes. Several other police officers who were at the riot later committed suicide.

Abortion Fear-Mongering 

In what should be classified as dangerous disinformation, Beasley also spread the lie that outlawing abortion will result in women’s deaths because they will be unable to access life-saving treatments for miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies.

She said:

Congressman Budd has been very clear and has said that he supports and is leading the charge on an absolute ban on abortion without exceptions for rape, incest, or risk to mother’s health. And so that means that for women who have been sexually assaulted, they will be forced to carry the pregnancy to term.

And for women who have ectopic pregnancies or septic uterus or miscarriages that their bodies won’t release, it means that they will not be able to get the life saving treatment that they need, which is an abortion, and that it and means that women will die. And that’s unacceptable. [Emphasis added]

Her claims are all false and have been repeatedly used by Democrats and pro-abortion activists following the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) CEO-elect and board-certified OB/GYN Dr. Christina Francis laid out the difference between procedures for elective abortion, ectopic pregnancies, and miscarriages and said they are “not related to abortion in any way.”

“So elective abortion … the intent of an induced abortion is to end the life of … a viable fetal human being,” she told Breitbart News, “that is not our intent when we treat an ectopic pregnancy. In fact, an ectopic pregnancy is treated with a completely different procedure than is used for any induced abortion.”

Francis said the most common way an ectopic pregnancy is treated is through surgery, “typically a laparoscopic surgery where either the [fallopian] tube is removed or in some cases — the tube can be opened and the pregnancy removed —  or treated with a medication called methotrexate, which is not commonly used for abortion.”

As for miscarriage management, Francis said the procedure is similar to what might be done in an elective abortion, though the “intent” of the procedure is not the same and would not be restricted by an abortion ban. Francis went on to say:

While the procedure might be the same — we might do a D&C [Dilatation and Curettage] for a first trimester miscarriage to empty a non-viable fetus out of a woman’s uterus — again, the intent of that procedure is what is at stake here and what is being discussed in states that might decide to restrict abortion in some way. So a D&C procedure would not be outlawed, but a D&C with the intent of ending a fetal human being’s life, that might be outlawed in the state. We use intent in medicine all the time, and that’s the key distinction here.

Francis said some people are confused “because the medical terminology for a miscarriage is a spontaneous abortion.” But she explained that “spontaneous abortion” and “elective abortion” are not the same, and treatments for the former are not banned by abortion laws.

MedlinePlus, an online information service produced by the United States National Library of Medicine, also clarifies that “miscarriages, which are sometimes called ‘spontaneous abortions’ in the medical community, are not the same as ‘elective abortions.’”

Concerning ectopic pregnancies, even pro-abortion Planned Parenthood’s own website differentiates between treatments for ectopic pregnancies and elective abortions.

“Treating an ectopic pregnancy isn’t the same thing as getting an abortion,”  the organization states.

Citing the Debunked Russia Collusion Hoax

When debating about President Joe Biden’s weakness on the international stage, Beasley contended that the United States began to appear foolish when former President Donald Trump began “cozying up to Putin and knowing that Russia was interfering in our elections.”

“You know, the signal to the world actually came under President Trump as he was cozying up to Putin and knowing that Russia was interfering in our elections,” she said. [Emphasis added]

Beasley seemed to be referring to the fraudulent “Russia dossier,” which was compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele using a variety of foreign sources, including sources allegedly close to the Russian government. Steele had been working for the opposition firm Fusion GPS. Fusion GPS was initially paid by a Republican source who wanted to stop Trump from winning the GOP nomination, but the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) later paid the firm, funneling money through the Perkins Coie law firm, Breitbart News reported.

A Department of Justice Inspector General report later noted the FBI had found that the “Steele dossier” was false. Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and the Democrat National Committee were ultimately fined $113,000 in March of this year by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) for hiding their spending on the “dossier.”

But Wait, There’s More

Beasley additionally denied campaigning with a defund-the-police-friendly candidate, despite the existence of a Federal Election Commission filing showing her campaign listed as participating in a joint fundraiser that included the campaign committee for Democratic U.S. Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO). Bush is a self-proclaimed socialist and supporter of the defund the police movement.

She also joined financial forces with four other far-left senate candidates in the states of Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to stave off Republicans from flipping the Senate from blue to red in November. One candidate is Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D), who believes law-abiding Pennsylvanians would be no “less safe” with one-third of the state’s prison population prowling the streets. Another is self-described socialist Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes (D) who is backed by pro-“defund the police” PACs.

Lastly, Beasley said Democrats’ plan to fund hiring 87,000 new IRS agents is a “myth.”

“This myth about the IRS agents has already been debunked. It is absolutely not true. It’s not been a part of any legislation,” she claimed during the debate.

In fact, the Inflation Reduction Act “raises taxes and will give the IRS billions to go into what the Wall Street Journal called ‘beast mode,’” Forbes reported.

As the Heritage Foundation details, “the IRS issued a report that described what the tax-collecting agency could do with nearly $80 billion in new funding, if only Congress would pass the American Families Plan. The Internal Revenue Service was making the case that the Biden administration’s plan to supercharge funding of the IRS would reap dividends for the federal government.”

“In a table in that report, the IRS shows that part of the ‘return on investment’ for America would be that by 2031 the IRS could increase the size of its workforce by 86,852 full-time employees,” according to the report.

“…The Inflation Reduction Act includes the same nearly $80 billion in new funding for the IRS over nine years as the American Families Plan, which would increase the IRS’ annual spending by an estimated $14.6 billion by 2031. Since the IRS funding plan remains almost the same, the IRS’ estimate of adding roughly 87,000 full-time employees to its ranks should still be a reasonable approximation,” the report continues.