Republican candidate Dr. Ben Carson – who has faced scrutiny over inconsistencies in statements about events in his life – said Tuesday night that he supports the media vetting presidential candidates.
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Politico questioned the veracity of Carson’s oft-repeated claim that he was offered a “full scholarship” to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, which does not offer scholarships because the cost of attendance for those accepted into the school is free. “Every single day, every other day or every week, you know, they’re going to come out with, “Well, you said this when you were 13.’ And the whole point is to distract the populus, distract me”.
Mike Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, said when he heard Carson’s complaints about the media, “I’m thinking pal, you ain’t seen nothing yet”. His campaign communications director, Doug Watts, said he believed Carson was referring to Kyle Cheney, who filed the report on West Point for Politico, which later clarified its reporting. Politico later changed the story’s headline and added an editor’s note with more details from the Carson camp.
The $3.5 million was accompanied by 100,000 new followers on Facebook. When pressed about the scrutiny given to Bill Clinton and President Obama (particularly over his birth certificate) Carson stood his ground saying “No, not like this”.
Reporters have spoken to Carson’s childhood friends and neighbors, and they have all said his claims about a violent past were inconsistent with their recollections of him as a calm and studious boy they had known.
Carson, a favorite of conservative activists, is neck-and-neck with Trump at the top of Republican primary polls a year before the November 2016 presidential election.
“We should vet all candidates, I have no problem with being vetted”. CNN investigated the claim, interviewing nine of Carson’s classmates. “Everything is different now, and instead of playing the role of the victim, Carson needs to answer the tough questions”. He said he is a threat to the media because he is the only candidate who can beat Hillary Clinton. But I don’t think anything that happened in the past week is going to play a big role in bringing his flight to an end. Carson never officially applied to West Point, but rather acknowledged the informal offer from staff and knew West Point wasn’t something that aligned with his already set goals.
Observers say that Carson’s personal narrative has been central to his successful campaign and star power.
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The Wall Street Journal, hardly a liberal news outlet, investigated a claim by Carson that he was featured in an article in the Yale newspaper for being the most honest student in a psychology class at Yale.
