Last updated on November 8th, 2015 at 09:24 pm
In an effort to defend top polling Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson, conservatives believe that CNN and Politico are liars. Oops, we need to add the Wall Street Journal and the Detroit News to that list now.
Saturday morning, the Detroit News (Ben Carson’s hometown paper) busted Ben Carson on his flimsy excuse for his previous inaccuracy about being offered acceptance and a full scholarship to West Point.
Friday evening, Carson lambasted Politico during a press conference for allegedly publishing an “outright lie” about his West Point story. Carson defended his wobbly story by saying that he interpreted an informal offer from Gen. William Westmoreland after a dinner together as an offer for a full scholarship. In his book “Gifted Hands”, Carson claimed this dinner took place after marching in a Memorial Day parade.
But the General was not even in Michigan let alone Detroit on Memorial Day or the days before or after it, according to the Detroit News.
Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson’s published account of having dinner with a top commander in the Vietnam War after marching in a Memorial Day parade in 1969 as a high school ROTC cadet in Detroit does not match historical records.
In Carson’s 1990 best-selling autobiography, “Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story,” the neurosurgeon tells of being offered a scholarship to West Point as a high school senior sometime after having dinner with the U.S. Army’s chief of staff, Gen. William Westmoreland, on Memorial Day 1969.
But Westmoreland’s personal schedule shows the general was not in Detroit on Memorial Day or during the days preceding and following the holiday. His schedule says he was in and around Washington, D.C., that weekend, according to Army archives The Detroit News reviewed Friday.
Even if Carson’s excuse for his first inaccuracy about being offered admission to West Point were true (and it could be as the General was in Detroit months earlier), it would still be inaccurate, as the Politico story explained that West Point doesn’t offer full scholarships and one doesn’t get an offer over dinner – a member of Congress usually nominates an individual and then that person is deeply vetted (they must vet more than the Republican Party).
So to get out of this conundrum with reality, Carson charged, “I interpreted it as an offer… I never said I received a full scholarship.” Carson is demanding that the media see things as he seems them, not as they are.
Reid Epstein of the Wall Street Journal (subscription only link) kindly shared the following evidence of liberal media bias against Ben Carson:
A class that never existed and another “offer/honor” that never happened. Quelle surprise.
Conservatives and their media outlets raised quite a stink over the last few days in an effort to defend Dr. Ben Carson from media vetting that repeatedly showed he hadn’t been accurate about his past. They pushed back hard against CNN after the network was unable to corroborate central details from his past, but CNN held strong. Ben Carson ended up blaming the media and whining about President Obama in an effort to avoid discussing why his past didn’t add up to the stories he’s told. Oh, and he changed some names and announced that actually, contrary to his own book, the “friend” he assaulted was actually a family member who might come forward of their own volition.
The Carson campaign viciously attacked Politico and accused them of publishing an “outright lie”. Many journalists were out front attacking Politico, in particular, which finally removed the word “fabricated” from their title in an article about how Ben Carson fabricated his West Point acceptance, even though he clearly wrote on several occasions that he had been offered acceptance and turned it down.
Carson then parsed language in an attempt to pretend what was on the page clear as day did not mean what it meant, and the media bit the catnip, sneering at Politico in a way we never saw them sneer when ABC’s Jon Karl’s “scoop” about the Obama administration being implicated in Benghazi based on emails he led readers to believe he had read turned out to be based on a Republican aide’s interpretation of said emails, which were edited to make the Obama administration look bad. This is one of the problems with being in the beltway “club”.
Meanwhile, MSNBC’s very Republican Joe Scarborough said Ben Carson “flat out lied.”
As I pointed out when this first started, Ben Carson looks a little absurd claiming that the media is biased because they are saying they can’t confirm that he almost assaulted his mother or hit a friend with metal in his hand. Yeah, sorry, but most presidential candidates couldn’t pass go with a history like that, and they certainly wouldn’t be bragging about it:
But let’s wrap this whole big lie up together. West Point has very strict vetting procedures. What are the chances that they would have “offered” a full scholarship to someone with a violent past and multiple victims? This strains credulity even without the questions about the actual stories.
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