Ben Carson insisted scrutiny of his personal backstory was biased and that people who know him know that he’s honest.
“We have to start treating people the same. And finding out what people really think and what they’re made of,” Carson said during the Fox Business Network debate Tuesday. “People who know me know that I’m an honest person.”
Carson was asked whether the claims that he embellished his biography was hurting his campaign. The neurosurgeon cracked a joke that he was thankful he was not being asked to recall a detail from the 10th grade, before turning his criticisms toward the media.
“The fact of the matter is, what, we should vet all candidates. I have no problem with being vetted. What I do have a problem with is being lied about. And then, putting that out there — as truth,” Carson said. “I don’t even mind that so much, if they do it with everybody, like people on the other side.”
He then pivoted towards Hillary Clinton and the accusations that she lied about the Benghazi attack.
“When I look at somebody like Hillary Clinton, who sits there and tells her daughter and a government official that, ‘No, this was a terrorist attack,’ and then tells everybody else that it was a video, where I came from, they call that a lie,” he said, referring to the Benghazi attack.
“I think that’s very different from, you know, somebody misinterpreting, when I said, that I was offered a scholarship to West Point, that is the word that they used,” he continued, referring to last week’s reports that that story had been fabricated since West Point is tuition-free.
“I have had many people come and say the same thing to me. That is what people do in those situations,” he said.
