Maddow rips the media: It's 'a farce' to act like Cruz is more reasonable on abortion than Trump

While focusing on Donald Trump's anti-abortion remarks a day earlier, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow also criticized her colleagues in the political press on Thursday for their coverage -- or lack thereof -- concerning his Republican opponents' own stances on the issue.

"I don't know if the Beltway media sort of doesn't get this yet, or if they don't feel like reporting on it or if it's uncomfortable, or if it earns you too many enemies from people you want to be sources or friends in the future," she said. "But what we are having right now in terms of the focus of the Republican presidential race and its national media coverage right now is a farce."

While Trump was stumbling over -- then retracting -- his notion of how to punish women for having abortions in an interview with Chris Matthews, Maddow explained, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was holding a "Women for Cruz" event in Wisconsin, and quickly criticized Trump's remarks, saying we "shouldn't talk about punishing women" in regards to reproductive health.

"Ted Cruz is right, that the anti-abortion movement in general has learned to stop talking about that," she said. "They don't like to talk about that; they like to say that they'll never talk about that. But it is, if we're being honest here, an unavoidable consequence of what it would mean if they get their way."

Besides saying that he believes he could push a ban on abortion without requiring Roe v. Wade to be overturned, Cruz has also touted his affiliation with Troy Newman, who wrote a book expressing his belief that abortion providers should be executed.

The senator has also gushed in public over being endorsed by Philip "Flip" Benham, who was convicted of stalking after he handed out posters containing an abortion provider's name and photograph.

If he were to win the presidency, Maddow said, Cruz would go farther than Trump and impose "the same criminal regime" on any woman who became pregnant, even if it happened through rape or incest. And yet Trump is treated as being more "outrageous" than Cruz.

"So, just a note to the national media and to the Beltway media on this subject," she suggested. "I know everybody's all over Donald Trump on this -- what will this mean for his campaign? -- but covering a story like this does not mean just writing down what people want you to say about them in the terms they want you to use."

Watch Maddow's commentary, as aired on Thursday, below.