Dr. Ben Carson held a brief and bizarre news conference Wednesday in which he called on Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to investigate whether there was any wrongdoing in his campaign, which had blasted out an email during the Iowa caucuses that said Carson was dropping out of the race.
Carson, quoting from Jesus’ Sermon On The Mount, said he wanted people to judge him based on his actions and not his words. He said that he hopes voters judge the other Republican presidential candidates by those standards, too, adding that Cruz should make some changes in his campaign if he found any wrongdoing.
“When I discovered that there were things in my campaign that I couldn’t agree with after doing an investigation, I made changes,” Carson said. “And I think that’s what a good leader does.”
Carson noted that Cruz apologized to him, but he did not mention the rumors the Cruz campaign circulated about him dropping out of the race before taking questions from reporters.
It was after these statements and other ramblings, about why Carson doesn’t want to be considered a politician and how important American values are, that a reporter in the crowd asked: “Just to be clear, we’re here because of what happened with the Cruz campaign?”
“I suspect that’s why you’re here,” Carson responded.
“You’re the one who called the press conference,” the reporter said.
“That’s why I’m here,” Carson said with a laugh. “I don’t know why you’re here.”
But Carson got testy when a reporter asked if he was reevaluating his campaign after it released a statement saying that he was leaving Iowa to travel home to Florida.
“Well let me ask you this question, ‘Is it OK after being on the road for almost three weeks to go home and get a fresh change of clothes?'” Carson shot back. “Or is that a problem? Does that make somebody into an evil, horrible person?”
