They Think They've Got Ben Carson with a Very Cleverly Written Politico Story
November 06, 2015
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Yeah, well, we were just poking along here about 10 minutes ago. It looked like it was actually gonna be kind of a slow day. And then everything blew up here, and then we --
RUSH: Yeah. And I still don't know what to make of this. There's something that smells about this still, and I can't put my fingers on it. But we're gonna have to get into it.
I was sitting here literally 15 minutes ago, and I was going through the final assembly stages of the program, the show prep today, this stack and that stack, and I'm going through
the stacks and I said, "You know what? There isn't anything... I don't know what the heck I would lead with today. I have literally no idea what would be the first thing that would come out of my mouth today. There's two or three contenders but there's nothing really stands out."
And then my iPhone rang. I looked at it, and I had an iMessage over there. Okay, so I looked at that, and it said, "There goes Carson." Oh, no. What now? So I went to the Internet. Nothing. I went to e-mail. Nothing. "There goes Carson." So I wrote back, "What are you talking about? What have I missed?" And before I had a chance to get a reply, my Drudge page reloaded, and it says, "
Carson Admits Fabricating West Point Scholarship." I said, "What in the name of Sam Hill is this?" So I clicked on the link, and it's a Politico story here.
And the first impression -- and I'm telling you, this is key. If you are unfamiliar with Carson and his book, and if you're not up to speed with the day-to-day details of the Carson campaign, and you see the headline here, "Ben Carson Admits Fabricating West Point Scholarship," what you end up after reading the headline, the subtext is that Ben Carson must have written a book in which he says that he was granted a scholarship to West Point and attended and now we learn the whole thing's not true.
So at first glance, "My gosh, he made up the fact that he went to West Point? How in the world does all this time go by and the people at West Point don't say anything? He's got it in his book that he attended West Point? How come nobody up to now has said, 'No, he didn't'?" But that's not what the allegation is. You've got to read further, and let's just do that here because the first impressions a lot of people are going to make here or going to have is that Carson has really made up, totally fabricated a story that has no element of truth in it, which is exactly what the Drive-Bys want.
There's also a key factor here in the campaign of who admitted this. But let's just take it as we got it. Politico: "Ben Carson Admits Fabricating West Point Scholarship." Okay. "Ben Carson's campaign on Friday admitted, in a response to an inquiry from Politico, that a central point in his inspirational personal story was fabricated: his application and acceptance into the US Military Academy at West Point. The academy has occupied a central place in Carson's tale for years," it says here. (interruption)
Well, I know. If it's as bad as it looks, all is not lost. At least he could work at NBC. They let you make things up there. In fact, in some places they promote you for making things up like that.
Moderation Edit -- Cut down for copyright.
He never went to West Point. He never said that he went to West Point. The contention is that he met Westmoreland, Westmoreland offered him a four-year scholarship at West Point, which there are none. So the media is convinced they found Carson out to be here in a big, big lie. And not a big, big exaggeration, but a big, big lie. Anyway, that's that, and that's what blew up here right before the program started. If not for this, it was gonna be... Well, nothing's ever humdrum here. But by the standards of the last two or three days, it was not gonna be as rocking and rolling. But, of course, that's out the window now.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay. Having set the table on this, I think I have a pretty good idea what happened here. But first I want to conclude. I want to tell you something. There is nothing in this article that demonstrates that Ben Carson did not meet with General Westmoreland. He says he met with General Westmoreland, and he did. There's nothing in the article that says that didn't happen. There is nothing in the article that demonstrates Westmoreland offered him a scholarship. Nothing in this article demonstrates that he was offered a scholar -- meaning to help him.
Carson may have assumed it was a scholarship. He's a teenager. He's a kid. He doesn't know how West Point works. There are no scholarships because everybody's expenses are paid. That's part of the drill. Getting into West Point is a bit of an honor, but it's also a commitment to the US Military. You owe them years of service after you graduate. I have a cousin who attended West Point and ended up being a professor for a time there. We all in our family were just busting buttons with pride. He was from Illinois. His name is Dan.
Ah, we were so proud we couldn't see straight.
I was young at the time, but I remember enough about the process and what it required, the nomination, climbing the ladder to prove you were qualified and so forth. But look, I'm getting sidetracked here. Carson did not lie about meeting Westmoreland, and when you're a young kid and you're talking to Westmoreland... You're the top-ranking ROTC kid in your town and you're talking to General William Westmoreland, the Army chief of staff, and he starts singing the virtues of West Point and informing you and telling you how West Point works, somebody like Ben Carson might have assumed that a scholarship was what was being discussed.
I mean, folks, it's not... What are we dealing with here? It's not like he doesn't remember what happened the night of Benghazi. It's not like Ben Carson has lied about any number of things, like the cost of health care premiums. Like Obama just, again, rejected the Keystone pipeline and told a couple of big whoppers. He said it will not be a factor on gasoline prices and it won't be a factor on the oil supply or the nation's economy. Both of those are big, fat whoppers. If you want to start talking about whoppers, it's always fascinating how the only people that ever get called on it and accused of it are Republicans.
Has the media ever gone through Obama's books and tracked down his assertions? 'Cause, I mean, there are some whoppers. See, the alternative media has done that. The conservative media has tracked down Obama's assertions, many of them. And how about the idea that Obama literally made up boyfriends and girlfriends and so forth and then combined various people into one fictitious character? And I remember the media praising that as a brilliant literary creation or usage.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I have here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers, a New York Times column by Maureen Dowd, the infamous MoDo, from June 15th of 1994. So this is 21 years ago. "
Hillary Clinton Says She Once Tried to Be a Marine." Yes. "The First Lady has offered a kaleidoscope of images to the public, but today she added the most curious one yet: Private Hillary. Speaking at a lunch on Capitol Hill honoring military women, Hillary Rodham Clinton said that she once visited a recruiting office in Arkansas to inquire about joining the Marines."

Are you kidding me? She was married to Bill Clinton in Arkansas. She wasn't in Arkansas before she met Clinton and married him. Why in the world would she want to join the Marines there? Oh. Well, wait a minute now. (laughing) Yes. Anyway, "She told the group gathered for lunch in the Dirksen Office Building, according to The Associated Press, that she became interested in the military in 1975, the year she married Bill Clinton and the year she was teaching at the University of Arkansas law school in Fayetteville."
Oh, okay. "She was 27 then, she said," and she wanted to become a Marine at 27, "and the Marine recruiter was about 21. She was interested in joining either the active forces or the reserves, she recalled, but was swiftly rebuffed by the recruiter, who took a dim view of her age and her thick glasses. ... 'You're too old, you can't see and you're a woman,' Mrs. Clinton said she was told," by some 21-year-old punk kid. "'Maybe the dogs would take you,' she recalled the recruiter saying. 'It was not a very encouraging conversation,' she said. 'I decided maybe I'll look for another way to serve my country.'"
Everybody lapped that up. Everybody believed that story. Mrs. Clinton's gotten mileage out of that story like you can't believe. Here's a woman who claims she's named after Sir Edmund Hillary. The only problem with that is nobody knew who he was when she was born because he had not yet climbed Mt. Everest. So nobody knew who Sir Edmund Hillary was. But she meets the guy. "You know what? I was named after you!" She lied, rather, to him. And of course there's all the... You could go down the list of things here.
Like Joe Biden lying about his academic record. We don't even know what Obama's academic record is! But, look, these are efforts here to illustrate media bias. But the fact remains the media hit Ben Carson today, and the Ben Carson campaign sort of gave 'em what they wanted by admitting that there was a fabrication here. The problem is this story... Remember first impressions. This story tries to make the reader believe that Ben Carson never want to West Point when he wrote that he did, and he never attended West Point.
Believe me, the way this is written is to convey the possibility Ben Carson said he did. "Well, I never knew he went to West Point." Well, nobody did because this story says so. But this implies or wants you to infer that Carson's made up something totally here, and he didn't. He didn't make up talking to Westmoreland. He's a top ROTC kid in his town, in Detroit, and there's no question if he talks to Westmoreland, Westmoreland's gonna talk about the Army to a number one ROTC kid. He's gonna build it up, is probably gonna explain West Point, explaining future options for this young ROTC candidate.
He talks about how it works. Ben Carson comes from poverty, doesn't understand things, and the way Westmoreland describes it sounds like a scholarship to Carson. So he writes about it. To me, it's understandable how he would think that he had been offered an opportunity, or at least had an opportunity presented to him. He could have understood it to have been exactly that. Now, what we have today in this Politico story is an effort to make it look like Carson lied, made things up, exaggerated, "And if he did it about this then what else has he lied about and made up?" And they're off to the races........
They Think They've Got Ben Carson with a Very Cleverly Written Politico Story - The Rush Limbaugh Show