Michele Bachmann: 'I Didn't Get Anything Wrong' During Presidential Debates

Bachmann Proudly Boasts About Flawless Record Of Accuracy

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) gave an interview this week at Patrick Henry College, an Evangelical Christian institution in Virginia, in which she proudly claimed that she'd had a flawless record of accuracy throughout the 2012 GOP presidential debate cycle.

“I was very proud of the fact that I didn’t get anything wrong that I said during the course of the debates," she said, according to Salon. "I didn’t get anything wrong, and that’s a huge arena."

Bachmann went on to explain the difficulty of achieving such perceived perfection.

“You have to be a virtual Wikipedia,” she said. “You can be asked anything. You could be asked, 'who’s your favorite contemporary singer?'”

Asked that question, Bachmann answered Beyoncé, perhaps unaware that such a preference could put her in the same camp as First Lady Michelle Obama, with whom the congresswoman has clashed in the past.

Bachmann's claim that she had an impeccable factual record in debates seems especially impressive, considering that the GOP managed to schedule 13 events between the beginning of the contest and Bachmann's exit from the race in early January 2012. Perhaps it's not surprising then that there is a long list of statements Bachmann made during debates showing she actually got a number of things "wrong."

Most memorably, during a debate in September of 2011, Bachmann attempted to deny charges that she'd called the HPV vaccine hazardous. Earlier that month, however, she'd stood up on a different debate stage and called it a "potentially dangerous drug."

"To have innocent little 12-year-old girls be forced to have a government injection through an executive order is just flat-out wrong. That should never be done. That's a violation of the liberty interests," Bachmann said. "Little girls who have a negative reaction to this potentially dangerous drug don't get a mulligan. They don't get a do-over."

While Bachmann made many more mistakes throughout debates -- and even more outside of them -- she's done her best to gloss over that part of her record.

During an interview in November 2011, the congresswoman claimed she hadn't "made a gaffe." In the wake of Texas Gov. Rick Perry's notorious "oops" stumble, Bachmann may have gotten away with that claim, if not for the attention she had drawn for appearing to confuse Libya as separate from the continent of Africa.

Before You Go

'I Haven't Had A Gaffe'

Unforgettable Bachmann Moments

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