Politico Takes Its First Walkback Step in Ben Carson Hitpiece; Now Admits Fabricated Lie That Ben Carson "Admitted Fabrication" About West Point

The original Politico headline and lede claimed Carson's campaign "admitted" Carson "fabricated" the West Point story.

In fact, the campaign didn't; the campaign clarified, and rebutted the interpretations Politico was forcing on Carson's words. Such as, when Carson says he was "offered" admission, that means he was formally offered (as opposed to a high-ranking army official suggesting he could and should get in), or that when he says he was "offered" this, he actually applied to West Point.

On that last point, Carson's own Gifted Hands -- the book that Politico claims contains this "central" claim about West Point -- makes plain that Carson only had the money to apply to one school. (Which I assume was Johns Hopkins).

As I mentioned earlier, the autobiography itself states he didn't apply to West Point (and so could not have been accepted); so how can Politico claim that Carson lied about this in the book?

With the story crumbling around them, they are now at least retracting -- without admitting the retraction, of course -- the lie that the Carson campaign "admited" "fabricating" the story.

Want to hear something funny? I wrote the sentence that they had not admitted their retraction before I checked the article. I assumed they had not noted it; I intended to check up on that after I got done drafting the post.

So I assumed they would be craven liars. High-risk bet, huh? And, now re-reading their new and improved piece, no, they do not confess that they had initially gotten the story wrong.

But you know -- Ben Carson is a liar for allegedly getting a few minor details about this 30 year old event wrong.

BTW, I screwed up and enstompenated Gabe's very useful Gabe-o-Fact Check on Politico's piece. Check it out.

posted by Ace at 04:19 PM

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