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