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Ben Carson admits fabricating West Point scholarship, Politico reports

“He was introduced to folks from West Point by his ROTC supervisors”, his campaign manager told Politico. This comes after the prestigious academy said they have no records of Carson’s application.

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But according to his campaign, the GOP candidate “can’t remember with specificity their brief conversation but it centered around Dr. Carson’s performance as ROTC City Executive Officer”. And West Point offers no “full scholarships” per se; all costs are free.

Carson has recounted the story of a scholarship to West Point several times during his campaign, including in a recent interview with Charlie Rose that aired on PBS.

Today, CNN published a story questioning Carson’s “inspirational” tales of childhood violence, including a nasty attack on a classmate and charging at his mother with a hammer.

Ben Carson is coming off as an untrustworthy narrator, at the very least and the Republican Party has an ongoing, systemic problem with vetting, and it’s all the liberal media’s fault!

“I had dinner with him and the Congressional Medal winners”, Carson wrote of a 1969 meeting with Gen. William Westmoreland, who had been in command of United States forces in Vietnam.

Presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson speaks during a fundraiser at the PGA National Resort and Spa on November 6, 2015. In that role he was invited to meet General Westmoreland.

West Point confirmed to the news outlet that the academy had no record of Carson applying. A representative said Carson got offers of an appointment to West Point but, ultimately, never applied. Furthermore, the Politico article noted, because all accepted students receive full funding from West Point, there’s no such thing as a “full scholarship” on offer by the academy.

“I never said I received a full scholarship”, the retired neurosurgeon quipped back.

Whoa! Ben Carson has confessed to lying about getting a scholarship from West Point Academy, and now Donald Trump is putting him on blast for getting caught in the act.

“Politico, as you know, told a bold-faced lie”, Carson said.

While an official letter of admission would have come from the adjutant general of the Army, who was not Westmoreland, she said it was common for top military officials to recruit the best and brightest high school students. He, however, modified his initial story about the stabbing saying it wasn’t a friend but a “close relative” who was the target of that assault.

Carson had a scathing response for the media regarding the investigation into his past.

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“I don’t like to generally bring them in, the names I used for instance are fictitious names because I don’t want to bring people into something like this because I know what you guys do to their lives‎”, Carson told reporters in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Ben Carson detailed a scholarship offer from a prestigious military school in his account of a meeting with General William Westmoreland in 1969 when Carson was a high school student