{"id":4927,"date":"2015-11-09T18:54:25","date_gmt":"2015-11-09T18:54:25","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2015-11-09T18:54:25","modified_gmt":"2015-11-09T18:54:25","slug":"the_latest_on_the_ben_carson_smear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2015\/11\/09\/the_latest_on_the_ben_carson_smear\/","title":{"rendered":"The Latest on the Ben Carson Smear"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Listen<\/a><\/p>\n

RUSH: The latest on the Ben Carson story, in no particular order. I\u2019m 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\u2019s Ben Carson Scoop Went Wrong.” Now, to refresh your memory, Politico runs a story on Friday claiming.<\/a>.. Well, they didn\u2019t “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. <\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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. <\/line><\/p>\n

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\u2019s an obligation. Everybody goes to the two academies on a scholarship. <\/p>\n

Anyway, the whole thing blew up because it became clear that Carson had never done anything that he had to admit. He hadn\u2019t 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\u2019re trying to track people down and they can\u2019t find any evidence of it, so that means Carson\u2019s lying. And that became the premise for the story. Anyway, it didn\u2019t take long to totally blow up The Politico story and illustrate it for the phony journalism that it was<\/a>. 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. <\/p>\n

This was CNN Dylan Byers: “Where Politico\u2019s Ben Carson ‘Scoop\u2019 Went Wrong <\/a>— 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\u2019 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.\u2019 It seemed like the sort of story that had the potential to ruin Carson\u2019s ambitions for the presidency. But the Politico story was not accurate on some key points.”<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t accurate on much of anything, folks. “And in the wake of pushback from the Carson campaign — which called the story an ‘outright lie\u2019 — Politico softened its headline, removed the ‘fabrication\u2019 language, and changed some key details — even as it said it was ‘standing by its story.'” But there was never any evidence in Politico\u2019s 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\u2019s doing? Ben Carson lied about going to West Point. <\/a>Why would somebody lie about going to West Point? And why, after all this time of lying about it, wouldn\u2019t West Point come out and say he never was there?” <\/p>\n

Well, \u2019cause 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\u2019s from this morning. Politico is still lying about it, even in their updated editor\u2019s note. The editor\u2019s 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\u2019s note tries to imply that he applied for admission and, of course, didn\u2019t get it, which is why he didn\u2019t go, and that\u2019s why he is lying. He can\u2019t face the humiliation of being turned down in his application to West Point. But he didn\u2019t apply. <\/p>\n

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\u2019re 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\u2019s one of us — he looked at me with his mouth wide open, he couldn\u2019t believe. <\/p>\n

I mean, I didn\u2019t even engage in a conversation. I just said, “Tim, it\u2019s not true. You\u2019re falling for it. Don\u2019t 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\u2019t believe it. <\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Tim looked at me like he didn\u2019t know what I was talking about, like I was the nutcase. I mean, that\u2019s the danger. He saw it, he saw it in the news. He didn\u2019t see the original in Politico. I asked him where he saw it, I forget what he said, wasn\u2019t the Politico. He saw it in some repeating network. It\u2019s a great illustration of what we continually are up against. <\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: The author of the Ben Carson piece in Politico, his name is Kyle Cheney. He\u2019s the author of the piece in Politico, and it turns on out… We get a little background on this guy from Breitbart,<\/a> 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\u2019s discredited hit piece on … Ben Carson, has a flair for hyperbole, writing about a 2004 arrest: ‘I was in Guantanamo for 12 Hours.\u2019 Cheney was arrested during an anti-war protest at the Republican National Convention in 2004.”<\/p>\n

<\/a>He\u2019s a Politico writer.<\/p>\n

“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\u2019 and ‘Republican demagogues.\u2019 He decried the ‘amBush\u2019 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,\u2019 slamming ‘the steady stream of outright lies and unmitigated praise for the law enforcement effort spewing from the bowels of Madison Square Garden.'” <\/p>\n

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.\u2019 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.\u2019 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 terrorists\u00c2\u2026\u2019.” <\/p>\n

And it goes on. <\/p>\n

But the one thing that\u2019s clear here: This guy is a true partisan hack, and he ends up writing the piece on Ben Carson at Politico. <\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Got some audio sound bites. I\u2019ve gotta get to them. We start here with CNN\u2019s State of the Union on Sunday morning. Former South Carolina state representative Bakari Sellers, a Democrat, is on, and they\u2019re discussing Ben Carson\u2019s campaign. And this Bakari Sellers guy, who is a former South Carolina Democrat representative, says…<\/p>\n

SELLERS: Everybody has read Gifted Hands or watched the movie with Cuba Gooding Jr. I mean, it\u2019s 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\u2019s what I say, because it was that inspirational. Now I can\u2019t tell if he\u2019s Rush Limbaugh.<\/p>\n

RUSH: See? See? He was going along just fine \u2019til he had to get all conservative on everybody, get all religious. Now I can\u2019t tell if the guy\u2019s Rush Limbaugh! Let me tell you something: That is a profound compliment. If somebody thinks Ben Carson\u2019s starting to sound like me, he\u2019s 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\u2019ve gotta take Ben Carson out. <\/p>\n

They\u2019ve got focus group and polling data that says Democrats hate me. So associate Ben Carson with me; that discredits Carson. That\u2019s why they do that. They don\u2019t understand that this is a multifaceted compliment. I\u2019ll take it each and every time. Oh, grab number two. We gotta play this before we get to Ben Carson. You\u2019ve gotta hear Carson refute some of this stuff \u2019cause he was really good and actually came alive on a couple of these things.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s Marc Lamont Hill, well-known malcontent. (coughing) Well, known civil… (coughing) Excuse me. He\u2019s a civil rights activist, and he\u2019s 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\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

Anyway, the CNN infobabe “Poppy” Harlow spoke with Marc Lamont Hill about Ben Carson\u2019s presidential campaign, and she reads part of the Washington Post op-ed that says that Carson\u2019s “up-from-nothing story works with white Republican voters.” Why doesn\u2019t an up-from-nothing story work with black voters? I mean, it\u2019s a distinctly American phenomenon. Up from nothing? It\u2019s 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?”<\/p>\n

HILL: Absolutely! I mean, Ben Carson… The greatest lie in American history is the myth of the self-made person. Nobody makes themselves! We\u2019re all shaped by our communities, by people who struggled and sacrificed for us, by governments that offer safety nets. Ben Carson\u2019s 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.<\/line><\/p>\n

RUSH: Whew! Man, is that convoluted. Did you hear how convoluted that is? So Elizabeth Warren, “You didn\u2019t build that!” Barack Obama, “You didn\u2019t 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\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t take very long for you as a black student to keep hearing, “The deck\u2019s stacked against you. You can\u2019t do it. The only people that make it are white Republicans.” I\u2019d 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\u2019d get mad, too. <\/p>\n

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?”<\/p>\n

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\u2019ve ever known, everybody I\u2019ve ever seen. There\u2019s gotta be a scandal. There\u2019s gotta be some nurse he\u2019s having an affair with. There\u2019s gotta be something. They are getting desperate. So next week it\u2019ll be my kindergartener teacher who said I peed in my pants. I mean, it\u2019s ridiculous. But it\u2019s okay, because I totally expect it.<\/p>\n