Fox News is helping Dr. Ben Carson hit back at Politico for catching his lie about being offered a scholarship to West Point. But I’m willing to bet it will not help him in the long run.
On last night’s Special Report, Bret Baier announced Carson’s pushback to the bombshell Politico report earlier:
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.
But that’s not what Carson has said. As I wrote earlier, Carson has repeatedly said he was “offered a full scholarship” to West Point. Which he was not.
Panelist Charles Hurt argued that it was “an editing mistake” in Carson’s book - even though Carson made the statement on PBS’ Charlie Rose a month ago. It was telling, in my view, that Baier played a clip of Carson making the statement.
However, Hurt went on to say that “getting into a fight with” Politico is “all good for Ben Carson.”
David Catanese, of the “liberal media’s” US News & World Report claimed that the story “unraveled online within five hours.” He said that Carson went from “dead man walking” to “conservatives are rallying for him.” Catanese added, “Carson, I think has won this news cycle and five hours ago, you thought he lost it and he might at the end of his campaign.”
But I’m standing by my prediction that Carson’s campaign is still close to losing Fox News, which means it will have lost the war, even if it has won the battle.
Here’s Fox News’ own George Will, who got almost the last word on the subject:
WILL: I think it can be imprecise speaking and foggy memory, neither of which is terribly culpable. But when your biography is your campaign, as his is more than any other, then you’d better get it right if you’re saying, “Elect me president because of my life story."
From there, Will launched into an even broader attack on Carson and one that had nothing to do with West Point:
WILL: He speaks in such modulated, dulcet tones that we tend to sometimes miss some of the harsh things he’s saying. He burst upon the scene at the 2013 Prayer Breakfast when he did something that really was inappropriate, I think. He lectured the president sitting next to him on the defects of ObamaCare.
In 1992 – and this is gonna be an issue before long – he changed sides, essentially, on a referendum on abortion in Maryland. …He went over to the pro-choice side. He has said in this campaign, he would use the education department to monitor the political biases on colleges and universities, which is a dubious idea. He says we live in a Gestapo age, which we really don’t. He said people taking the new advanced placement history test will be ready to sign up for ISIS, which I doubt. He said of ObamaCare, it is, in a way, slavery and before the 2014 elections, he said if the Republicans don’t capture the Senate, there might not be 2016 elections.
So he’s got a rhetorical record that’s going to get more scrutiny.
Catanese added that this was a “warning shot to the Carson campaign” that more scrutiny is on the way and he also warned the media to make sure to get their stories right.
But nobody challenged a word that Will said.
Watch it below, from the November 6 Special Report.
How gracious it was of WSJ’s Strassel to admit that the scholarship lie is “probably something worth looking at but…”. Geez.
And, despite it being clear from the clip that Carson repeated the claim on Rose’s show, the panelist from the WaTimes actually tried to run with the idea that it was a book “editing mistake” – and the other 3 didn’t challenge that? Unbelievable.
There is no such thing as a scholarships from West Point. By definition anyone claiming they got one, were offered one, or were going to get one if they applied is LYING. Period.
To substantiate right-wing whitewashing of Carson, GOPTV™ is showing more of Ben’s presser where he rages on the press. Carson is now spreading a new lie completely debunked by FactCheck.org (http://www.factcheck.org/2012/07/obamas-sealed-records/) that Obama’s college records are sealed and the media is being irresponsible in not attacking Obama for it.
Crackpot Ben Carson is apparently a serial liar who is being abetted by Fox News in telling his lies.
Albeit, the lies, as always, are being spread in a wholly fair and balanced manner. ;^)
Speaking of lies, “Fox & Friends” completely misrepresented Politico’s story by arguing the renaming of Politico’s article to “Exclusive: Carson claimed West Point ‘scholarship’ but never applied” amounts to them admitting they were wrong and Carson didn’t lie.
What the liars at Fox News omitted was the editor’s note at the beginning of the update (emphasis added): “POLITICO stands by its reporting on this story, which has been updated to reflect Ben Carson’s on the record response. The original story and headline said that Carson’s campaign had admitted he ‘fabricated’ a ‘full scholarship’ from West Point, but now Carson denies that his campaign’s statement constituted such an admission, and the story and headline were changed to reflect that.”
So, basically, Politico is not saying Carson isn’t a liar. Just that Carson’s dishonest campaign is still trying whitewash his lie.
What’s more ridiculous is Carson’s attack on the media at the presser – in refusing to address the issue – he accused them of liberal bias in not similarly attacking Obama during his campaign. Seriously? The entire Birther narrative?
Recall all of GOPTV™’s smears of Hillary saying it isn’t the lie but the cover-up they’re upset over? Well, for Fox News the same rules don’t apply to Ben Carson. Not my shocked look.
The hard right will of course cry foul here, since they’re enjoying tweaking the GOP establishment. But it doesn’t change the fact that Carson willfully puffed up his resume. Had Barack Obama or Bill Clinton been caught in a lie like this, Fox News would have covered nothing but that for YEARS. Even today, we’d be seeing coverage of that any time Bill Clinton’s name came up. But if it’s Ben Carson, Fox News would have us think of it as just another campaign moment to move along from. (On the surface, of course.)
The actual facts around Carson’s situation with both Westmoreland and West Point are different from what he has repeatedly stated, even recently. It seems that Westmoreland did attend a dinner honoring a Medal of Honor recipient that Carson likely also attended as a 2nd Lt in the local ROTC. But that was earlier in the year, not on Memorial Day. We also have no idea whether Carson even met Westmoreland, other than being able to attend the same event. And we do know that the “full scholarship to West Point” line was false. It’s possible someone in his ROTC told him he could potentially be appointed there, but Carson’s narrative about it bears no relationship to what would have happened had he actually been in a position to choose whether or not to attend West Point. The academy would have a record of this, and they do not.
Carson’s new insistence that he never actually applied is still a ways off from the facts. You can’t just apply to attend this academy. They’re extremely exclusive. You have to be appointed, and it’s a big deal for it to happen. Had he actually been appointed and given this opportunity, and then turned it down as he says he did, it’s the sort of thing a lot of people would remember. In reality, it sounds like someone may have suggested it to him as a possibility that he never pursued. But that’s not as noble a story as the one he’s been peddling, is it?
Again, if this were a Democrat candidate, Fox News would have eviscerated him, and would continue to do so every single time his name came up.
What’s more interesting to me is that the Fox News group has adjusted the debate army. As expected, they’re dumping Graham and Pataki. But in a fun development, they’ve banished both Huckabee and Christie to the kids’ table. In the case of Huckabee, I believe it to be a matter of his campaign not having much staying power.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say that Roger Ailes is encouraging Huckabee to come back to the network in time to comment on the primaries, etc. The smart move for Huckabee would be to grab the opportunity – since it would freeze out Ted Cruz, who is clearly campaigning for Huckabee’s slot on the network. It doesn’t allow Huckabee to come back with the huge raise I think he thought he’d get from a new presidential campaign, but it at least allows him to block Cruz and continue to make a very comfortable living while opining at will. When the primaries really get going and Cruz winds up on the sidelines, it will be interesting to see where Cruz goes. If Huckabee blocks him from Fox News, I suppose he could wind up with NewsMax or with Glenn Beck. I frankly always expected both Cruz and Carson to have radio shows by January 2017, from which they’d predictably throw rocks at Hillary Clinton or whichever person gets sworn into the White House next.
With Christie, I think Ailes may actually be giving him a chance to get MORE attention, since he’s getting lost in a sea of lecterns on the stage. In the smaller debate, it’s a better chance for Christie, like Fiorina, to jump out to center stage and take over the evening. And once a few more contenders fall out (Carson, Paul, Rubio), maybe Christie gets to come back to the mainstage…
If I understood correctly, ALL West Point cadets pay little to nothing for the privilege of attending the accademy BUT all of them will be required to spend FIVE years in active service after graduating.
On an earlier thread, a poster said that you don’t just apply: your name is advanced by a duly elected person and those selected have to undergo a grueling screening procedure. West Point comes into the picture only when it has a list of names to work with, so I guess that’s when the academy may have contacted him. It’s not like he was singled out for special attention since the academy rather prides itself on being totally neutral.
Dr. Carson should have learned all that as an ROTC member (said Shep, quoting a friend who’d attended West Point himself).
OMG, I can’t believe I’m agreeing with George Will twice (including his take on BOR’s book) in the past couple of days. LOL!
Because Carson has no voting record, has held no public office, etc. to be scrutinized, his own words and his book are going to be combed through. That’s all the media and the voters have to go on. However, Carson (and his defenders) can’t seem to come to grips with this obvious circumstance. Instead Carson tries to distract by insisting that the media is out to get him by quoting and asking about his own freaking words. Pffft.
Carson was caught in a flat-out lie (“Later I was offered a full scholarship to West Point”). And I have yet to hear anyone on FOX “news” point out that Carson told Rose the same thing in an interview. I also read where he repeated his claim on Facebook where he took questions from supporters. Book “editing mistake”, my ass.
And, now there’s evidence come to light (as updated by Politico) that Carson’s claim of meeting Gen. Westmoreland at a Detroit dinner (as noted in the same book paragraph in which he states that he was offered a scholarship) is also suspect. The US Army has released the General’s calendar on that date and it shows that he was in DC and played tennis that evening. Perhaps Carson got the name wrong (although saying it was Westmoreland is a pretty big mistake). But there’s no way his saying (and repeating) that he was offered a West Point “scholarship” was a mere mistake.