Ben Carson’s camp began damage control almost immediately after a Politico story that broke Friday afternoon said the retired neurosurgeon fabricated his “application and acceptance” to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
In a Friday report from Politico about his “application and acceptance” to West Point, the campaign confirmed Carson never applied for admission to the prestigious training academy despite repeated claims of being offered “a full scholarship.”
Carson’s business manager, Armstrong Williams, spoke with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Friday. Blitzer asked if it was true that “in this particular case, there was no application and no acceptance.”
Williams agreed that Gen. William Westmoreland “encouraged” Carson to apply, but Carson “has been clear that he never applied. He gracefully later had to let them know that his calling was medicine.”
Carson, in a Friday interview with the New York Times, called the offer an “informal” encounter.
In an interview with The New York Times Friday, Mr. Carson said: “I don’t remember all the specific details. Because I had done so extraordinarily well you know I was told that someone like me – they could get a scholarship to West Point. But I made it clear I was going to pursue a career in medicine.”
“It was, you know, an informal ‘with a record like yours we could easily get you a scholarship to West Point.’ “
In a statement to conservative website The Daily Caller, one spokesman called the article “an outright Lie.”
Here’s part of the statement spokesman Doug Watts gave to The Daily Caller:
The Politico story is an outright Lie. Dr. Carson as the leading ROTC student in Detroit was told by his Commanders that he could get an Appointment to the Academy. He never said he was admitted or even applied.
The campaign never “admitted to anything”
This is what we have come to expect from Politico.
Read the full statement at The Daily Caller
Oh yeah…they know this is a mortal blow.
This pushback still doesn’t jive with what was in his book (which doesn’t jive with official records). Having your HS ROTC Commander telling you that you could go to West Point is NOT the same thing as having dinner with a general and being offered acceptance (and a scholarship, what ever that means since West Point doesn’t have “scholarships”. No cadet pays tuition).
Perhaps the Carson campaign can find “Bob,” the guy he supposedly tried to stab, to corroborate his West Point story.
Too late, Ben. Too late,
So he was accepted to West Point after all? Please make that argument Ben. I’m guessing that with this, together with his nutty interview on CNN this morning that he’ll be dropping out of the race sooner rather than later.
But, but, Bob wasn’t Bob. Will the real Bob please stand up, or perhaps the real Ben Carson. Or is Ben Carson just his ultra ego?