MSNBC hosted a couple of presidential "town halls" this Thursday, which both basically amounted to hosts Chris Matthews, who interviewed John Kasich, and Chuck Todd, who interviewed Ted Cruz, lobbing one softball after another to the two Republican candidates and allowing their litany of lies to go unchallenged.

One of the more disgusting portions of the Todd/Cruz interview was the portion where Cruz was asked about his appeal to so-called "moderate" Republicans and what he might do in order to reach out to them, and Cruz managed to turn his answer into a lying diatribe about Democrats, Hillary Clinton, her stance on abortion and on Planned Parenthood. Chuck Todd, for his part, was about as useful as a potted plant, which is all I've come to expect of the man who once openly admitted that he didn't think it was his job to fact check his guests.

Despite the fact that he has pledged to support some of the most extreme anti-abortion laws in the country called personhood laws, which would make many forms of contraception like the IUD illegal, Cruz tried to pretend that he doesn't really want to ban some forms of birth control: Cruz refuses to answer on personhood during MSNBC town hall:

TODD: So you decide when life begins. I mean, I’ll be honest. That’s the dispute here. Right? When does life begin? And when do they have constitutional rights?

CRUZ: I will say, when it comes to birth control. It is clear that Americans have a right to birth control. I am not interested in any legislation—

TODD: All kinds?

CRUZ: – Any restrictions that restrict birth control.

TODD: All kinds?

CRUZ: And you know. Listen.

TODD: I hate to get into the details here but IUD is a big one because—

CRUZ: Chuck -

TODD: – of what some people view that it’s not contraception because—

CRUZ: You know it’s interesting, this debate. It actually illustrates something that the media doesn’t understand. The media often describes, and says, life is an issue that is an advantage for the Democrats. You know who doesn’t believe that?

TODD: Actually, that wasn’t what my question is.

CRUZ: But— let me go with this for a second because I’m going to loop back to this.

TODD: Okay.

CRUZ: You know who doesn’t believe that? Democrats. Name the last presidential race where Democrats campaigned trumpeting their support for abortion. You think about the 2012 election. The 2012 election the Democrats focused over and over again on the war on women, which was a totally made up threat. But it focused on contraceptives. It wasn’t on abortion. It was on contraceptives. And and it was. Listen, I have been around conservatives my entire life. I have never met a single human being, in any place, who wanted to ban contraceptives.

TODD: There’s some people that are not thrilled with it. Not for religious reasons.

CRUZ: Listen. There are people who because of their faith don’t use contraceptives. That’s – you have a right to follow your faith. That’s not my faith. I’m Southern Baptist. My faith doesn’t have a problem with contraceptives but I respect those whose faith differs from mine and the great thing about our country is you can live according to your faith. If you’re faith says don’t use birth control then you don’t use it. You know, in my family, I’ve joked. Heidi and I have two little girls. I’m very glad we don’t have 17.

You know, we can have some tolerance and some diversity. But the fact that the Democrats had to create this made up threat on contraceptives shows that most Americans want to protect life. And I hope that we have a culture that values every human life from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death.

TODD: Personhood. Are you going to purse it as an addendum?

CRUZ: I told you I’m not going to get into the labels but what I will say is we should protect life but I’m not interested in anything that restricts birth control. And I’m not interested in anything that restricts in vitro fertilization because I think parents who are struggling to create life, to have a child, that is a wonderful thing.

After getting a pass on having to actually answer the question on personhood, Cruz moved on to attacking Planned Parenthood:

TODD: It sounds like you think this movement doesn’t—there isn’t legislation yet you could support yet for this movement.

CRUZ: What I believe is that we should defend life. And I’ll tell ya, I have a long record of defending life – of defending, for example –

TODD: Well, no one is questioning whether you’re pro-life. This is a different. That’s why I’m asking. Would you pursue this?

CRUZ: I will happily support anything that protects life. And protecting life is a value that matters. Whether it is stopping partial birth abortion which I think is a barbarism. Or whether it is fairly enforcing the criminal laws against Planned Parenthood. You know a few months ago, we had this series of videos that were horrifying.

Cruz went onto accuse the Department of Justice of letting Planned Parenthood off the hook for supposedly selling baby body parts, which as we all know, is a bald-faced lie, and cited those doctored videos as proof, and what was Chuck Todd's response?

You guessed it. Crickets.

MSNBC continues its downward spiral to be Fox-lite by giving these liars free airtime to spew their venom. Shame on them.