Within days of Ben Carson reaching the top of the polls, by total coincidence I’m sure, three different organizations launched three different attacks on him. If you somehow missed them I’ll start with a brief summary:
Buzz Feed
Buzz Feed reported at the 1998 commencement at Andrew’s University Ben Carson offered “My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain.” While this will give the Evangelical Atheists ammunition to mock him with the usual claims such as he “must think that the world is only 5000 years old” “ha ha” while I do disagree with Mr. Carson’s theory I fail to understand how this will affect his ability to lead the country.
CNN
CNN did an investigation based on Ben Carson’s 1990 autobiography ‘Gifted Hands’ to “find the classmates who Carson said are victims of the attacks” but “so far have been unable to locate any of them.” Considering that these events would have taken place around 50 years ago, I’m not sure what exactly CNN accomplished and, to me, it proves nothing about Mr. Carson’s character.
Politico
Politico ran a story originally titled “Ben Carson admits fabricating West Point scholarship.” The title was later changed to “Exclusive: Carson claimed West Point ‘scholarship’ but never applied” because no such admittance took place. The story boils down a conversation that Mr. Carson had with General William Westmoreland in 1969 where Mr. Carson said that General Westmoreland told he that he would be welcome if he chose to attend West Point. The only other person that could corroborate what they talked about is General Westmoreland but since he passed away in 2005 that’s not happening.
If you’re looking for someone on the right who is questioning Ben Carson’s honesty you can check out TheBlaze’s Matt Walsh’s podcast “In defense of Career Politicians.”
Last Friday afternoon Mr. Carson held a news conference “Ben Carson strikes back at the press” where he addressed all the claims.
The O’Reilly Factor
All this brings me to Donald Trump, last Friday Mr. Trump honored one of his fanboys, Bill O’Reilly, with a rare in-studio appearance on the O’Reilly Factor. You can see the exchange here. Before O’Reilly got to Mr. Trump he opened with all the above claims about Mr. Carson including that his campaign admitted this his story about West Point “wasn’t true.”
While Bill O’Reilly asked Mr. Trump to “stick together on this small ball dopey stuff.” Donald Trump would have nothing to do with this and followed with such statements as:
- “He hit his mother over the head with a hammer”
- “He hit a friend in the head with a lock”
- “He tried to kill someone with a knife”
- “He said he suffers from a pathological disease”
- “When you suffer from a pathological disease you’re not really getting better unless you start take lots of pills”
- “So he went into a bathroom and all of a sudden he found religion”
- “There’s something very strange here going on”
- “Do you think that this is the right temperament to be President”
- “I never hit my mother over the head with a hammer and neither did you” “Did you ever hit your mother?”
- and again “…admits that he suffers from pathological disease”
I found the entire exchange very distasteful but also a good example of the type of character that Donald Trump possesses. I’ll leave it up to you to decide for yourself.
You can read more of my posts at markEwatkins.com
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