Carson Dances Around Flap With Cruz Camp In Bizarre Press Conference

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?”

64
Show Comments

Notable Replies

  1. “brief and bizarre”

    That’s pretty much everything Ben Carson says.

  2. “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?’”

    I traveled that one time. Took extra clothes in a special container made for that purpose. His cell phone must be dead dead dead.

  3. Well, you know, the base wants and demands and will by God have an inexperienced, outsider candidate, and that’s what it got—a candidate so inexperienced and outside that he never even thought up a way to get his damn clothes clean on the road. Either that, or this is another bogus Presidential run by these outsider clowns where the guy just felt like flaking off home for a while and made up an idiotic excuse about it. The whole thing is just sad, in an advanced country. Just sad.

  4. Avatar for hgc10 hgc10 says:

    No, going home to Florida to get a change of clothes does not make you an evil person. Stabbing someone in the belt buckle makes you an evil person. Directing a gunman to rob an employee at a Popeyes Chicken establishment makes you an evil person.

Continue the discussion at forums.talkingpointsmemo.com

58 more replies

Participants

Avatar for codegen86 Avatar for doremus_jessup Avatar for kwoodgr Avatar for brooklyndweller Avatar for deuce Avatar for mattinpa Avatar for leftflank Avatar for chammy Avatar for trnc Avatar for squirreltown Avatar for mh26 Avatar for inlabsitrust Avatar for Lacuna-Synecdoche Avatar for daveyjones64 Avatar for cpinva Avatar for candirue Avatar for darrtown Avatar for cpl593h Avatar for meta Avatar for eatbees Avatar for clauscph Avatar for jimbo92107 Avatar for nydiva Avatar for mkclpi

Continue Discussion