Ben Carson told Yahoo News that he will reveal the identity of the person he tried to stab as a youth if the press agrees to a few conditions.
Said Carson: “I do have this deal to make. If the media will promise that they will not bother this person or any of the other people, and if they promise that they will be honest, truthful and apply everything to everyone equally from now on, I will reveal this person. Is that fair?”
“I would let him operate under a friend of mine, not necessarily me but a friend of mine.”
— Donald Trump, quoted by Politico, when asked if he would let Ben Carson run one of his companies.
First Read notes Donald Trump previewed a possible line of attack against Ben Carson: “Well, I feel badly for Ben. I’ve gotten to like Ben. And it’s a tough thing. I mean, he writes a book where he went after his mother, hit her on the head, or wanted to hit her on the head with a hammer. Hitting a friend in the face with a lock, with a padlock, hard in the face, stabbing somebody, only to be broken up by a belt buckle. And when he writes that he has pathological disease in a book, now he obviously wrote this book prior to thinking about running for office, I assume. But he said he has pathological disease.”
“Our prediction: Trump senses weakness, and he’s going for it.”
Rick Klein: “The doctor is in, and he may be safe. The hottest storyline entering Tuesday night’s Republican debate involves Ben Carson and the multiple storylines involving his personal history. But who will want to take on the good doctor? Seven in 10 Republican view him favorably, in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll. Media bashing, moreover, has intensified in the two weeks since the last debate.”
“Donald Trump may go there, and the risk to his support posed by Carson is real and acute. Trump, though, he seems certain to be alone in wanting combat with the genial Carson, who could easily fade into the background, as he has at previous debates. That will leave additional scrutiny on Jeb Bush, whose attack on Marco Rubio last time around seems only to have backfired. And one thing observers and participants have learned since the last debate: Pay close attention to Ted Cruz, who tends to be a longer game than his rivals on debate stages.”
Despite Ben Carson’s claims of being unfairly vetted over inconsistencies over his biography, First Read finds it’s not true.
“We found a combined 165 New York Times and Washington Post articles that were all (or partially) about Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright between the time Obama first launched his presidential bid (Feb. 2007) and his 2008 victory (Nov. 2008). During that same time period, we found an additional 41 New York Times and Washington Post pieces on Obama and Bill Ayers. And from the start of her campaign (April 2015) until now, we discovered a combined 44 NYT/WaPo articles about Hillary Clinton and her email server.”
“Bottom line: When you’re atop of the presidential polls, you’re going to get scrutiny — lots of it.”
Ben Carson blamed his co-author for apparent inaccuracies in his book, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Said Carson :“You know, when you write a book with a co-writer and you say that there was a class, a lot of time they’ll put a number or something just to give it more meat. You know, obviously, decades later, I’m not going to remember the course number.”
Donald Trump told ABC News that the controversy swirling around his rival Ben Carson “very strange.”
Said Trump: “It’s a strange situation when you talk about hitting your mother on the head with the hammer. It’s a weird deal going on and I hope it all works out because I don’t want to see Ben have problems over this stuff.”
He added: “I guess a book was written… before he was in politics, but he said he has ‘pathological disease’ in the book. That’s a very serious problem because that’s not something that’s cured. That’s a very serious thing you have to live with.”
Asked about reporters looking into his personal history, Ben Carson told NBC News that he has “never seen” this type of intense vetting before and believes it is because he is “a threat to the secular progressive movement.”
Said Carson: “I’m a very big threat because they can look at the polling data and they can see that I’m the candidate who’s most likely to be able to beat Hillary Clinton. They see that.”
The Wall Street Journal digs further into Ben Carson’s rags to riches story and find even more problems.
“The threat to the Carson candidacy is that the inconsistencies or hard-to-check anecdotes, which were told long before he ever considered a presidential run, will put off voters only now getting to know him.”
Kevin Drum: Ben Carson seems to have a serious personal honesty problem.
Ben Carson’s “published account of having dinner with a top commander in the Vietnam War after marching in a Memorial Day parade in 1969 as a high school ROTC cadet in Detroit does not match historical records,” the Detroit News reports.
“In Carson’s 1990 best-selling autobiography, Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story, the neurosurgeon tells of being offered a scholarship to West Point as a high school senior sometime after having dinner with the U.S. Army’s chief of staff, Gen. William Westmoreland, on Memorial Day 1969. But Westmoreland’s personal schedule shows the general was not in Detroit on Memorial Day or during the days preceding and following the holiday. His schedule says he was in and around Washington, D.C., that weekend.”
Ben Carson “abandoned his gentle manner on Friday night and delivered a powerful public scolding of the news media that has begun to question his celebrated biography,” the New York Times reports.
“In the process, he turned what has become an almost robotic ritual for candidates under attack — the live and often defensive news conference — into an aggressive confrontation, and at times interrogation, of the reporters’ motives and methods.”
“The performance, at a news conference in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., was mesmerizing at times, in part because of the serious personal questions that have been raised: whether he embellished or even made up crucial episodes in his life story, like the attempted stabbing of a childhood friend and his claim that West Point had offered him a ‘full scholarship.'”
“Well, I think it’s really the beginning of the end.”
— Donald Trump, quoted by the Washington Post, on hearing that Ben Carson had fabricated parts of his personal story.
“Ben Carson’s campaign on Friday admitted, in a response to an inquiry from Politico, that a central point in his inspirational personal story was fabricated: his application and acceptance into the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.”
“The academy has occupied a central place in Carson’s tale for years. According to a story told in Carson’s book, Gifted Hands, the then-17 year old was introduced in 1969 to Gen. William Westmoreland, who had just ended his command of U.S. forces in Vietnam, and the two dined together. That meeting, according to Carson’s telling, was followed by a ‘full scholarship’ to the military academy.”
“West Point, however, has no record of Carson applying, much less being extended admission.”
After Ben Carson suggested in a Facebook post that the signers of the declaration of independence has never, like himself, served in elected office, the Wall Street Journal quickly pointed out this was false.
“Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams, John Hancock and many other signers had been elected members of their colonial assemblies, prior to signing the Declaration.”
Carson amended his statement saying they has no “federal” elected experience.
Ben Carson is lashing out at the media, calling recent questions into his violent childhood past “a bunch of lies” and “pathetic,” ABC News reports.
Said Carson: “It is just garbage. We have too many things that are important to deal with.”
He added: “The story is well-documented. If you choose not to believe it, if it doesn’t fit the narrative that you want, that’s fine. Let’s let the American people decide.”
Donald Trump “took a major swipe at Ben Carson on Thursday, picking up on reporting suggesting that the retired neurosurgeon fabricated anecdotes about his violent past in order to create a narrative of personal redemption, as Carson went on the attack against the network investigating his stories,” Politico reports.
Said Trump: “The Carson story is either a total fabrication or, if true, even worse-trying to hit mother over the head with a hammer or stabbing friend!”
CNN finds many inconsistencies with Ben Carson’s narrative as a violent youth, noting that “nine friends, classmates and neighbors who grew up with Carson told CNN they have no memory of the anger or violence the candidate has described.”
“That person is unrecognizable to those whom CNN interviewed, who knew him during those formative years. All of the people interviewed expressed surprise about the incidents Carson has described. No one challenged the stories directly. Some of those interviewed expressed skepticism, but noted that they could not know what had happened behind closed doors.”
Ben Carson “told graduates during a commencement address in the late ’90s that he believed the pyramids in Egypt were built by the biblical figure Joseph to store grain, and not, as most archeologists contend, as tombs for pharaohs,” BuzzFeed reports.
Said Carson: “My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain. Now all the archeologists think that they were made for the pharaohs’ graves. But, you know, it would have to be something awfully big if you stop and think about it. And I don’t think it’d just disappear over the course of time to store that much grain.”
Donald Trump responded on MSNBC: “I think I’ll have to put that in my repertoire about Ben. That was a strange deal.”
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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