I think it's amazing politico is making such a big deal out of a non-story.This is what Carson's autobiography said about his days as a top ROTC guy in HS: "Afterward, Sgt. Hunt introduced me to General Westmoreland, and I had dinner with him and the Congressional Medal winners. Later I was offered a full scholarship to West Point."Now Politico is acting like Carson is a liar because he never applied or was accepted to West Point.Since this is a running website, let's use a running analogy. Lots of runners are implicitly offered scholarships who never apply. If Stanford coach Chris Miltenberg calls up the #1 recruit in the country and says, "Hey you should apply here. We'll hook you up." That runner could easily say write in his autobiography. "Hey, I turned down a scholarship from Stanford." Technically, neither the runner or Carson were offered a scholarship but common sense shows that they would have been offered one.The best rebuttal I've read on this is here:http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2015/11/06/despicable_politico_lie_spreads_around_the_world_as_american_media_attempts_a_political_assassination_of_dr_carson
Rush wrote:
If you're an inner city kid, even though you're doing well in ROTC, and here comes the future chief of staff of the Army, General William S Westmoreland, and he's extolling the virtues of West Point and telling you how it works -- and part of how it works is you don't pay anything to go there -- it's entirely understandable that a young kid might think he's being offered a free ride. Which, in his vernacular, is a scholarship. Which, by the way, happens to be a big objective in many families across this country, be they African-American or otherwise.
Getting a scholarship to college, either academic or athletic, is a huge deal because it costs so damn much. So getting a scholarship has become synonymous with a free ride. And the way Westmoreland's describing the experience at West Point could have easily sounded to somebody like a young Ben Carson as a free ride, which in his world equals scholarship. He didn't lie about anything. He didn't lie about attending West Point. He didn't write that he went. He didn't write that Westmoreland got him in....
"The Politico story is an outright Lie,' Doug Watts told" the Daily Caller today in response to the Politico hit. ..
Here is the full statement Watts provided to [The Daily Caller]: 'Dr Carson was the top ROTC student in the City of Detroit. In that role he was invited to meet General Westmoreland. He believes it was at a banquet. He can't remember with specificity their brief conversation but it centered around Dr. Carson's performance as ROTC City Executive Officer. He was introduced to folks from West Point by his ROTC Supervisors." He's never maintained that he sought admission and never maintained that he attended....
So they (the Politico) clearly want ignorant, impressionable, uninformed readers to think that Ben Carson's out there writing in his book that he went to West Point and that The Politico today has uncovered the fact that he didn't. And do you want to know how successful this is? I'm not gonna mention any names here. In the opening segment of this program, I'm going through exactly what I just told you here, and somebody on the other side of the glass shouted to me, "It doesn't matter, he's toast! The truth doesn't matter. He's toast."
Left, if you want to take out Carson, do it for something legit - his evolution views or something. Not this. It's embarrassing. Next.