Ben Carson did not lie about West Point. Instead, Politico lied about him. As conservatives, we need to defend him.
As J. Christian Adams reported yesterday, Politico published an article on Friday claiming that Ben Carson’s campaign “admitted” he lied about being offered a “full government scholarship” to West Point. My colleague pointed out that Politico’s reporting was sloppy, but the same goes — he argued — for the campaign’s response. The point seems to be: Politico’s article isn’t entirely fair, but Carson’s response and exaggerations mean he’s not ready for the spotlight.
Although Carson’s campaign certainly made a mistake by responding to Politico’s inquiries the way they did — they kept it too vague — the fact of the matter is that the website’s piece was nothing more than a hackjob. Politico is known to be the personal propaganda website of Democrats and the Republican Party’s establishment, both of whom hate Carson (and other outsiders and/or conservatives like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz).
Here are the facts. As Mark Levin explained on his radio show yesterday, West Point frequently put out ads back then (we’re talking almost 50 years ago) claiming that students would get “full government scholarships.” They would get everything for free: they wouldn’t have to pay tuition, they’d even get a wage, and everything they needed to live (dormitories, etc.) would be taken care of. In return, the students had to serve a couple of years in the military after they graduated. This system is still in place by the way, but I’m not sure West Point still advertises it as “full government scholarships.”
Although every single West Point student gets that offer, Carson didn’t pretend that the “offer” given to him was special. He just said — and repeated it several times — that General Westmoreland had told him he could help Carson get into West Point and offer him that full government scholarship. They may not have told the young Ben that every other student got the same deal because they wanted to convince him to join West Point and feel special (which he undoubtedly was), but that’s of little importance.
In other words, while it would have been smarter for Carson to point out that they offered him what they offered every other West Point student, he didn’t lie. Yet that’s exactly what Politico accused him of. What’s worse, the liberal hacks writing for that site even said his campaign admitted he fabricated the story — which he clearly did not. They also said that he never applied to West Point — which is something he never said. In fact, he wrote the opposite: he thought about applying, but eventually decided against it.
If anyone lied, it’s Politico, not Dr. Ben Carson.
More importantly, it’s of little to no consequence whether you believe that Carson should have been more precise or not. What does matter is the following: liberal hacks posing as journalists are trying to take down yet another solid African-American conservative.
We, Carson’s fellow conservatives, can’t let them get away with that. We need to rally the troops and come out in support of Carson — yes, even those of us who support other candidates (I’m all in for Ted Cruz). As a group we have to say: “Enough of this. We won’t allow you to destroy conservative minorities any longer.”
In contrast to what liberals believe, minorities like African-Americans and Hispanics have every right to think for themselves and leave the Democrat plantation once they realize that liberals are playing them for fools. And we need to support them when they do, and when they’re targeted for destruction as Ben Carson clearly is.
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