Ben Carson’s campaign on Friday admitted, in a response to an inquiry from POLITICO, that a central point in his inspirational personal story was fabricated: his application and acceptance into the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
The academy has occupied a central place in Carson’s tale for years. According to a story told in Carson’s book, “Gifted Hands,” the then-17 year old was introduced in 1969 to Gen. William Westmoreland, who had just ended his command of U.S. forces in Vietnam, and the two dined together. That meeting, according to Carson’s telling, was followed by a “full scholarship” to the military academy.
West Point, however, has no record of Carson applying, much less being extended admission.
“In 1969, those who would have completed the entire process would have received their acceptance letters from the Army Adjutant General,” said Theresa Brinkerhoff, a spokeswoman for the academy. She said West Point has no records that indicate Carson even began the application process. “If he chose to pursue (the application process), then we would have records indicating such,” she said.
When presented with these facts, Carson’s campaign conceded the story was false.
This is Rubio’s moment, or maybe Cruz’s moment. It’s somebody’s moment, anyway (but not Trump’s: he’s had his). Meanwhile Christie, cut from the GOP debate list as an annoying irrelevance, bangs his fists on the table somewhere in an empty campaign office in New Hampshire in impotent rage.
he’s mentally unstable considering this is the just the latest lie coming after he claimed to have assaulted his mother with a hammer, stabbed a relative with a knife and attacked others with a baseball bat and rocks.
Folks, this person is disturbed. He should not be allowed to get anywhere near the nuclear button.
And now he and that Joker Trump have taxpayer funded Secret Service protection.
MEH, the Republican Clown Show is making us the laughing stock of the world.
Fred Rick LaRiccia
it will probably cause his poll numbers to go up. Only in this Republican cycle…
It’s a mistake, as many pundits are assuming, to write this off as a game over moment for Carson. In any other cycle it would be, but they said that after Trump belittled McCain’s POW experience, and it had the opposite effect.
Another clear example of IOKIYAR…
Trump, Carson, and (to an extent) Fiorina are the bright shiny objects of the Republican Primaries. Trump and Carson are both television personalities. Trump and Fiorina are sales people. One should expect large helpings of bombast, exaggeration, and truth stretching. To try to figure out whether that stuff is going to help or harm the most recent exaggerator is no more than a desire to learn the news before it happens.
As a Democrat, I welcome the prospect of the Republicans lining up behind a fatally flawed candidate who can be demolished in the general election. Fiorina, tell them again what a great business leader you were. It would be best if we could all sit on our hands and let them be lulled by their well-sealed echo chamber into nominating an obvious charlatan.
Now instead is the time to drive home how nothing any of them has said makes sense.
1. Denial of global warming becomes monthly more preposterous.
2. Every single Republican tax plan would blow up the deficit that they all claim horrifies them.
3. Had we bombed the Syrian government during the Period of the Red Line, ISIS would have grown even larger. Everything they say about the Middle East collapses under the feather pressure of light mockery. We just need to apply that mockery.
4. Their immigration tough talk can look really stupid without much work: Deporting millions of Latin Americans will not look good on television. With the baby boomers soon joining the rolls of the retired, someone explain why we don’t urgently need an infusion of younger working people.
Perhaps their attacks on Planned Parenthood are actually a clever long-term plot intended to raise our national birth rates. That is, after all, surely a predictable effect of doing any damage at all to the nation’s largest provider of contraception to women — especially young and working-class women (not to mention the corresponding uptick in abortion rates that will follow).
I wonder how much, if any, analysis has gone into investigating the long-term effect on the social security trust fund of the wholesale replacement of the high-wage workers of the 1970s and 1980s with the flood of minimum-wage workers that has resulted from several decades of plundering the economy.
It sounds to me as though we’re on track to minimize on-going social security tax contributions at precisely the same time that we are maximizing on-going and well-deserved social security expenditures to retiring baby-boomers.
Kids born today will pay into Social Security as early as 15 years from now, but 18 is probably a more reasonable number. With a baby boom between 1946 and 1964, that makes born in 1955 the median. In 18 years, Americans born in 1955 will be 78.
More than half of baby boomers will likely be dead by the time kids born today start paying into Social Security.
Certainly Christie and Graham have something to contribute. If the media insist on being gatekeepers why don’t they point out the absurdity of the candidacies of the two “front runners” rather than rely just on polls?
“I’m loud and hate social security, and have no business rooting for the Cowboys!” Chris Christie
“I believe in climate change and bombing the daylights out of other countries, I will do nothing about the former and can’t wait to do the latter!’-Lindsey Graham.
‘Jesus this, and Jesus that, except if your gay, poor, or black’-Mike Huckabee
Lots of inconsistencies and weird comments.
Apparently polls say that Carson’s support will go almost entirely to Cruz.
I would assume he would be done for, but I also assumed he wouldn’t have much traction in the first place, so I really don’t know what to make of the GOP race. These two have far outlasted the Cain and Bachman with their frontrunner status. It does appear that Cruz and Rubio aptly played the waiting game, with Rubio picking up Jeb’s support and Trump and Carson support going Cruz’s way. I still can’t picture Trump or Carson getting the nod, but Cruz could still be in it to win it, and that’s a frightening thought.
But when asked, a majority of Carson supporters list Cruz as 2nd choice.
I don’t think Carson expected these old books would get much scrutiny. It was just one step in a product line that he’d promote by “running for president”. It’s not his fault he never expected to get the poll numbers that would result in someone other than his target audience (elderly Republicans easily separated from their money) would pay attention.
Be a pugnacious racist and idiot — #1 or 2 in the GOP field. Be a half-asleep grifter — #1 or 2 in the GOP field. What a country!
If I recall correctly, Herman Cain was at the front of the GOP pack at this point in the last presidential campaign (November 2011). Ben Carson reminds me of Herman Cain, and not just because of his race. I have trouble believing that even Republicans in America are foolish enough to nominate Ben Carson or, for that matter, Donald Trump.
It is certainly true that the media smear-machine, led by Fox News, will do its best to take out Ms. Clinton while smearing as much lipstick as possible on sows like Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and Ms. Fiorina. I remain relentlessly optimistic that Americans will see through and reject these outright lies. I remind us that the same media smear machine, led by Fox News and the GOP (are they different?) had Bill Clinton as Satan incarnate going into the 1996 presidential election, and he won by a wide margin.
I think the most likely GOP nominee remains Jeb Bush (though his polling is indeed dismal). Failing that, I predict that the GOP will end up nominating somebody who is not presently in their field of candidates.
…who reported being courted by kings and queens for political advice.