RUSH: The latest on the Ben Carson story, in no particular order. I’m gonna go back to November 6th here. This is last Friday at the end of the day, which was a barn-burner of a day here on the EIB Network. “Where Politico’s Ben Carson Scoop Went Wrong.” Now, to refresh your memory, Politico runs a story on Friday claiming... Well, they didn’t “claim” anything. They wanted the reader to believe that Ben Carson, in his book and on the campaign trail, has been telling people that he applied for admission to West Point and was accepted and was offered a four-year scholarship and then went to West Point.

That was what they wanted everybody to think. It was such a rotten, poorly written headline. And the story was bouncing off the headline. And the story was Carson’s claims untrue, campaign admits, apologizes or whatever. But the thing is, Carson never said that he went to West Point, he never said that he applied.

All he had said was that he was leading ROTC student in Detroit at one point and, as such, met General Westmoreland, and General Westmoreland spoke highly of West Point as he would to any ROTC person and extolled the virtues of going there and made it clear to Carson that if he did go, it would be paid for, it would be a scholarship. It turns out we have found advertising paraphernalia for West Point that they use that even describes what they do as a scholarship. They tried to say that Carson lied because there are no scholarships at West Point. Well, the Naval Academy, too, but everybody just gets in. And it’s an obligation. Everybody goes to the two academies on a scholarship.

Anyway, the whole thing blew up because it became clear that Carson had never done anything that he had to admit. He hadn’t lied. But the other aspects of his story about beating up a kid and being a bully and having a violent youth and so forth and they’re trying to track people down and they can’t find any evidence of it, so that means Carson’s lying. And that became the premise for the story. Anyway, it didn’t take long to totally blow up The Politico story and illustrate it for the phony journalism that it was. Not just the biased, but racist journalism that it was. And so, at the end of the day on Friday some news organizations were starting to hit The Politico.

This was CNN Dylan Byers: “Where Politico’s Ben Carson ‘Scoop’ Went Wrong — What initially looked like a disaster for Ben Carson could now be a major black eye for Politico. On Friday, Politico reported that Carson had ‘fabricated’ his application and acceptance into West Point, and that his campaign had acknowledged as much in an interview. That story was initially headlined ‘EXCLUSIVE: Ben Carson admits fabricating West Point scholarship.’ It seemed like the sort of story that had the potential to ruin Carson’s ambitions for the presidency. But the Politico story was not accurate on some key points.”

It wasn’t accurate on much of anything, folks. “And in the wake of pushback from the Carson campaign — which called the story an ‘outright lie’ — Politico softened its headline, removed the ‘fabrication’ language, and changed some key details — even as it said it was ‘standing by its story.'” But there was never any evidence in Politico’s story that Carson ever claimed to have applied to West Point, yet they said that he did. Well, no. The way they wrote the headline and the accompanying story, they wanted the reader to think that Carson had written a book, and in the book he accepted a scholarship to West Point and attended, and now Politico had discovered that he never went to West Point. And so what they want, “My God, did you hear what Ben Carson’s doing? Ben Carson lied about going to West Point. Why would somebody lie about going to West Point? And why, after all this time of lying about it, wouldn’t West Point come out and say he never was there?”

Well, ’cause he never lied about going to West Point. He never lied about applying. He never lied about getting a scholarship. The whole thing was an assassination piece, as I so clearly and brilliantly laid out on Friday. “Following pushback from the Carson campaign, Politico softened its headline and changed its lead.” Mediaite even had a story: “Politico Changes Headline of Controversial Ben Carson West Point Story.” But this story’s from this morning. Politico is still lying about it, even in their updated editor’s note. The editor’s note continues to say that he implied that he applied for admission, when the quote they cite goes on to say the opposite. He never applied. He simply said that Westmoreland made it available or made it sound like something attractive to do, but Carson from the get-go always said no, medicine is where I want to go. He never even toyed with the idea. And yet even the revised Politico story and the editor’s note tries to imply that he applied for admission and, of course, didn’t get it, which is why he didn’t go, and that’s why he is lying. He can’t face the humiliation of being turned down in his application to West Point. But he didn’t apply.

So even as of the weekend Politico was still trying to turn the screws in after trying to appease some of their buddies in the media by softening the headline. But Ben Carson never once claimed he applied or was granted admission to West Point. I played golf Saturday morning. I played golf and a guy came up to me, “Gee, Rush, how about that Ben Carson story, lying about West Point.” And I said, “Tim, please go back and look at it. You’re buying into a bill of goods. This is exactly what they want people to think. He never applied, he never went, he never said he did, either. Everything in that story is an out-and-out lie.” And he looked at me — and he’s one of us — he looked at me with his mouth wide open, he couldn’t believe.

I mean, I didn’t even engage in a conversation. I just said, “Tim, it’s not true. You’re falling for it. Don’t be a dupe like this. He never went. He never applied. The whole thing is a made-up lie.” The look on his face was all you needed. He couldn’t believe it.

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RUSH: Tim looked at me like he didn’t know what I was talking about, like I was the nutcase. I mean, that’s the danger. He saw it, he saw it in the news. He didn’t see the original in Politico. I asked him where he saw it, I forget what he said, wasn’t the Politico. He saw it in some repeating network. It’s a great illustration of what we continually are up against.

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RUSH: The author of the Ben Carson piece in Politico, his name is Kyle Cheney. He’s the author of the piece in Politico, and it turns on out… We get a little background on this guy from Breitbart, and he has a history of over-the-top rhetoric and exaggerations, much like his hit piece on Carson is. Joel Pollak has the story. “Kyle D. Cheney, the Politico reporter who wrote last Friday’s discredited hit piece on … Ben Carson, has a flair for hyperbole, writing about a 2004 arrest: ‘I was in Guantanamo for 12 Hours.’ Cheney was arrested during an anti-war protest at the Republican National Convention in 2004.”

He’s a Politico writer.

“Though he was, at the time, an editor for the student newspaper at Boston University, he seems to have joined the protest as a demonstrator,” not a journalist. “Later, Cheney wrote an angry op-ed about his detention. He attacked ‘the Bushies’ and ‘Republican demagogues.’ He decried the ‘amBush’ in which he was arrested — during a protest he admits he knew had no permit — and attacked ‘the New York City Police Department and its henchmen,’ slamming ‘the steady stream of outright lies and unmitigated praise for the law enforcement effort spewing from the bowels of Madison Square Garden.'”

This is a classic, irrationally angry leftist — a former protester of Republican conventions and all things Republican — and he gets hired as a writer at Politico. “Cheney complained about his detention with dozens of others in Pier 57, ‘Guantanamo on the Hudson.’ He later agreed to a deal, along with other defendants, in which charges were dismissed ‘if we stay out of trouble for half a year.’ Still resentful weeks later, Cheney claimed that America ‘can never claim to be what it once was: A land that cherished freedom of expression, distinguished between peaceful protesters and malicious terroristsÂ…’.”

And it goes on.

But the one thing that’s clear here: This guy is a true partisan hack, and he ends up writing the piece on Ben Carson at Politico.

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RUSH: Got some audio sound bites. I’ve gotta get to them. We start here with CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday morning. Former South Carolina state representative Bakari Sellers, a Democrat, is on, and they’re discussing Ben Carson’s campaign. And this Bakari Sellers guy, who is a former South Carolina Democrat representative, says…

SELLERS: Everybody has read Gifted Hands or watched the movie with Cuba Gooding Jr. I mean, it’s inspiring. When I travel around and speak, I tell kids, you know, to be a lawyer like Thurgood Marshall or be a scientist like George Washington Carver or a doctor like Ben Carson. I mean, that’s what I say, because it was that inspirational. Now I can’t tell if he’s Rush Limbaugh.

RUSH: See? See? He was going along just fine ’til he had to get all conservative on everybody, get all religious. Now I can’t tell if the guy’s Rush Limbaugh! Let me tell you something: That is a profound compliment. If somebody thinks Ben Carson’s starting to sound like me, he’s gonna go places. But see, these Democrats, what they think is the mention of my name causes immediate disapproval for the person they associate with it. This Democrat guy, this Bakari Sellers, is on CNN — and be they’ve gotta take Ben Carson out.

They’ve got focus group and polling data that says Democrats hate me. So associate Ben Carson with me; that discredits Carson. That’s why they do that. They don’t understand that this is a multifaceted compliment. I’ll take it each and every time. Oh, grab number two. We gotta play this before we get to Ben Carson. You’ve gotta hear Carson refute some of this stuff ’cause he was really good and actually came alive on a couple of these things.

But here’s Marc Lamont Hill, well-known malcontent. (coughing) Well, known civil… (coughing) Excuse me. He’s a civil rights activist, and he’s now the professor of African-American studies at Morehouse College. Why does this guy keep changing schools, Snerdley? (interruption) Well, he used to be at Georgetown, I think. I know he was at Columbia. Why does…? (interruption) Why does he keep changing schools? Do these other schools come along and offer better deals? I don’t know.

Anyway, the CNN infobabe “Poppy” Harlow spoke with Marc Lamont Hill about Ben Carson’s presidential campaign, and she reads part of the Washington Post op-ed that says that Carson’s “up-from-nothing story works with white Republican voters.” Why doesn’t an up-from-nothing story work with black voters? I mean, it’s a distinctly American phenomenon. Up from nothing? It’s happened to a lot of African-Americans. Carson is one of them. And yet here it is, Ben Carson, it happened to him, and somehow all it is, is a message that resonates with white Republican voters. “Poppy” Harlow says, “Marc, is the key to what the op-ed says white Republican voters?”

HILL: Absolutely! I mean, Ben Carson… The greatest lie in American history is the myth of the self-made person. Nobody makes themselves! We’re all shaped by our communities, by people who struggled and sacrificed for us, by governments that offer safety nets. Ben Carson’s able to say, “I was saved by Jesus and hard work.” That allows him to reject a safety net. That allows him to push back against the expansion of a welfare state.

RUSH: Whew! Man, is that convoluted. Did you hear how convoluted that is? So Elizabeth Warren, “You didn’t build that!” Barack Obama, “You didn’t build that!” Marc Lamont Hill, “This is a myth! The greatest lie in American history is the myth of the self-made person. Nobody makes themselves. We’re shaped by our communities, our governments, and our safety nets.” This is what young African-Americans are being taught at Morehouse College or Georgetown or Columbia.

Wherever this guy is teacher African-American studies, the entire concept of capitalism and the American dream is being debunked. Well, I maintain that it doesn’t take very long for you as a black student to keep hearing, “The deck’s stacked against you. You can’t do it. The only people that make it are white Republicans.” I’d get mad, too. If I believed my professor, if I believed my professor was authoritative figure and unassailable and if I trusted him — if I believed this garbage — I’d get mad, too.

Now to Dr. Carson himself. He was in Palm Beach Gardens on Friday night. He held a press conference after all this Politico stuff. Reporter said, “To what extent do you believe your West Point account is relevant to the public assessment of you as a presidential candidate?”

CARSON: What it shows, and these kind of things show, is that there is a desperation on behalf of some to try to find a way to tarnish me, because they have been looking through everything. They have been talking to everybody I’ve ever known, everybody I’ve ever seen. There’s gotta be a scandal. There’s gotta be some nurse he’s having an affair with. There’s gotta be something. They are getting desperate. So next week it’ll be my kindergartener teacher who said I peed in my pants. I mean, it’s ridiculous. But it’s okay, because I totally expect it.

RUSH: The reporter then says, “You don’t seem to have a recollection when questions were asked, everybody that has been spoken to says, I don’t remember these incidents,” like when you stab somebody or when you beat somebody up, although his mother, it’s been discovered, wrote about the stabbing, that’s been found. I’ve got it somewhere here in the Stack. Anyway, here’s Carson’s answer to that.

CARSON: Why would they remember that? What a bunch of garbage. The only people who would know about that would be the people who were involved. My prediction is that all of you guys trying to pile on is actually going to help me, because when I go out to these book signings and see these thousands of people, they say, “Don’t let the media get you down. Don’t let them disturb you. Please continue to fight for us.” See, they understand that this is a witch hunt.

RUSH: Yes, I’m gonna tell you, that just fuels the media even more, when the people reject ’em, they get even more committed to the cause. See, back when the media had their monopoly, there wasn’t any of this. The Politico story happens during a media monopoly, and Carson’s finished, that’s over with. He can go out and do all the press conferences he want, they’re not gonna get covered. All the reporters in the world can continue to blaspheme the guy, to go out and ridicule the guy, and he can do all the press conferences in the world is nobody is gonna ever know about it. But now everybody does know and everybody does react, and the media has competition. It just steels them to get even more outrageous to prove that they can still shape public opinion.

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RUSH: Here’s Tom in Dallas. I’m glad you waited, sir. Really appreciate it. How you doing?

CALLER: Very good. Thank you for taking my call. I really enjoyed your parodies on hold.

RUSH: Yeah, thank you.

CALLER: I just want to say that I had applied to a service academy and graduated and attended and spent some considerable time in the service around the same time that Ben Carson would have. It would be my opinion, and I think it would be shared by many, that it would have been his for the taking if he had applied based on where he’d been, Yale and later Johns Hopkins. I can also remember the forums that I went to and attended as a student and hearing the kinds of recruiting type of things like this is the equivalent scholarship, but the fact that he used the term scholarship and not “appointment,” which is what happens when you do go to a service academy, you get appointed, I believe it was just an honest mistake in terms. And that’s how it should be treated.

RUSH: I think it’s nothing but that. I mean, exactly. If you’re a kid like Carson, who grew up poor and even at that age at 19, you’re top ROTC and you’re talking to one of the top dogs in the army, William Westmoreland, and he starts describing West Point to you and happens to mention it doesn’t cost you anything, that we’ll put you through college, whatever, he’s gonna hear that as scholarship. That’s what, to people even today of that age, if you don’t pay to go to college, it’s a scholarship. The fact that he doesn’t know that they don’t call it a scholarship does not disqualify him telling the story.

In fact, we’ve even found, as I pointed out, some printed literature that West Point uses, the Army uses, and they even use the word “scholarship” because they know that’s how to communicate what they’re offering in terms of the common vernacular. It was really a cheap shot, and it’s ongoing, by the way. The media’s not letting up on this. They’re not gonna stop. He’s leading in the polls in too many places. They have to take him out. That’s the purpose of the media when it comes to Republican candidates. That’s all they exist to do, is take out Republican front-runners, period.

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RUSH: Hey, Marc Lamont Hill, who built the safety nets, hmm? Who built all these things that you think you built for people to rely on? It seems like the producers built all that stuff, not you. You’re just a user. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.