Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson tells The Brody File that Politico’s story saying that he made-up a part of his 1991 autobiography, Gifted Hands, is ridiculous. My phone interview with him on this is below along with the full transcript.
This all centers on how Carson said in the book that he, “was offered a full scholarship” to West Point. Politico reported that he fabricated the story because he never applied to West Point to even be considered for a full scholarship. But there is so much more to the story. Here is Ben Carson is his own words.
Ben Carson: Well, what happened is I rose through the ranks very quickly, faster than anyone had ever done to become the city executive officer for the city of Detroit I got a lot of attention, got invited to a lot of things, met a lot of people and I was told that because of my accomplishments, they would be able to manage to get me into West Point, and that I wouldn't have to pay anything. And I just kind of quashed it at that moment. I told them that I was very honored, but I was going to be a doctor, and that I wasn't going to take that route and that was kind of the end of that. There was no application process. I never even started down that path.
David Brody: Right, so just so I understand, the beef that the campaign, yourself have with Politico is that they started to go down this normal path of applying an admission process, and you're saying is that they got that wrong because that's not the way it went down.
Carson: That's completely wrong, and I don't know where they would've gotten that from. Certainly no one in our campaign told them that.
Brody: So when you say In Gifted Hands that you were offered a full scholarship… you were referring to this conversation.. do I have that right?
Carson: That's correct.
Brody: …What is your message to Evangelical as it relates to this in terms of what the media is doing here and about the vetting process and about being under scrutiny?
Carson: My message is that all that is going on I fully expect because the, particularly the secular progressive movement is incredibly threatened by me. They will continue to look for anything, I mean they'll ask my kindergarten teacher if I wet my pants. They will go through all lengths to try to discredit it me, but I have the truth on my side, so I'm not particularly worried about them. They're already very frustrated because they've been every place I've (muffled). They were sure there was some kind of scandal. They were sure there was a nurse that I had an affair with – something, and they're getting very, very frustrated.
Brody: And you're sure they took it out of context…
Carson: Right, they've taken it out of context completely. They probably had the story already written and then when they talked to someone at my campaign, they didn't bother to correct the facts, and they figured they'd get a big sensational story.
Brody: Any regrets about using the words "I was offered a full scholarship…"
Carson: I mean that was the way it was presented to me. I understand the way West Point works is through a different mechanism, but that's the way it was presented to me, and you know I'm thinking of something that happened almost a half century ago.
Brody: A pleasure sir. Thank you so much for doing this…