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Nov. 6, 2015 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:51
November 6, 2015, Friday, Hour #3
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That's right, the Ben Carson campaign is out now saying the Politico made it up.
The Politico story is an outlier outright lie.
I said the campaign didn't admit anything to Politico.
It's Friday.
Let's go.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open live Friday.
Yes, sir.
Sizzling and cooking here on a Friday heading into yet another big exciting weekend.
Telephone number, 800-282-2882.
The email address, lrushbow at eibnet.com.
Thank you.
This whole story from the Politico is based around the flimsiest of things.
Carson never said he went to West Point.
He never said he accepted an offer to go to West Point.
This is media malpractice what the Politico has done here.
The Politico Carson's story that West Point was talked up to him.
Basically what?
He said he met with Westmoreland when he was a top ROTC guy when Carson was, and that Westmoreland started talking up West Point to him, promoting West Point.
And among the things, they offered me a four-year scholarship.
Now, everybody that goes to West Point or to the Naval Academy pays nothing because you are making a minimum five-year commitment to them.
Four-year undergraduate, two years commissioned service, may be a minimum six years and can and can sometimes be more.
But nobody pays.
That's the whole point.
It's an obligation.
You're making a commitment to go there.
They want the best and brightest.
There's an application process.
And Carson never said he applied.
He never said he attended.
The political story makes it look like that Westmoreland said to Ben Carson, hey man, come join us at West Point.
And that the skids were greased and that Carson might have gone and quit whatever, but he never did.
He never replied, and he never said that he did.
Here's the the entire Politico headline.
Ben Carson admits fabricating West Point scholarship.
That headline is based on this quote from Carson's spokesman, which admits no such thing.
Here's the quote.
He was introduced to some folks from uh from West Point by his ROTC supervisors, said Bennett, the campaign manager.
They told him they could help him get an appointment based on his grades and performance in ROTC.
He considered it, but in the end he did not seek admission.
And from that, a story has been built that Ben Carson fabricated, fabricated and exaggerated.
What?
Uh a conversation with General Westmoreland about attending West Point.
And as I said at the beginning, this story is written in such a way that if you haven't read Carson's book, and can I see a show of hands how many of you have?
That's what I thought.
Nobody.
So if you haven't, if you haven't read Carson's book, well, I mean the odds are, well, what's a percentage, even if it's a number one bestseller, how many people have read it?
Versus how many people read Drudge and see this link and read and click on this story.
Okay, so you read the link, you read the political story, and the way this is written, you're gonna think that Ben Carson has said he attended West Point and he attended on the scholarship, and that Politico has found out that he didn't attend.
That's what they want you to conclude.
That he lied about going to West Point.
They've got the proof here that talked to somebody at West Point.
Carson never showed up here.
I mean, he wasn't even, we didn't even extend an invitation.
Why, he didn't even apply.
Well, of course he didn't.
He admitted he didn't apply.
And if he didn't apply, he couldn't have attended, so he couldn't have lied and said that he did.
He's admitted that he didn't apply.
The political story wants readers to believe that Carson's telling everybody he went to West Point for four years.
But they at the Politico have uncovered the lie.
This is right up there with NBC's editing of the 911 call.
This is worse than that, but it's right up there with NBC editing the 911 call In the Zimmerman case to make it look like Zimmerman was a flat out racist when the race of Trayvon Martin was the last.
He had to be asked about it.
He did not volunteer it, contrary to the editing of the NBC did at the 9-11 tape.
Here's what Politico wrote in its lead.
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 to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
He didn't fabricate it.
See this?
They want you to believe that he applied and attended.
His books and the campaign manager quoted in the story admit that he didn't apply.
Therefore, he couldn't have attended.
This is base journalistic malpractice.
Here's what Carson wrote in his book, Gifted Hands.
Afterward, Sergeant Hunt, his high school ROTC director, introduced me to General Westmoreland, and I had dinner with him and the Congressional Medal winners.
Later, I was offered a full scholarship to West Point.
And so the political, he never offered you.
You weren't offered anything.
We talked to West Point.
You never applied.
Well, the campaign said today that they never did apply.
The whole thing centers around, we've had some callers from the Military Academy graduates today, call and say that this is entirely understandable if you're an inner city kid, even though you're doing well on ROTC.
And here comes the future chief of staff of the Army, General William S. More well William Westmoreland, and he's extolling the virtues of West Point and telling you how it works.
And part of how it works is that you don't pay anything to go there.
It's entirely understandable that a young kid might think he's being offered a free ride, which in his vernacular is a scholarship.
Which, by the way, happens to be a big objective.
In many families across this country, be African American or otherwise, getting a scholarship to college, either academic or athletic, is a huge deal because it costs a damn much.
And so getting a scholarship has become synonymous with a free ride.
And the way Westmoreland's describing the experience at West Point could have easily sounded to somebody like a young Ben Carson as a free ride, which in his world equals scholarship.
He didn't lie about anything.
He didn't lie about attending West Point.
He didn't write that he went.
He didn't write that Westmoreland got him in.
So what is it that he lied about?
What is it the campaign admitted they fabricated or exaggerated?
From the Daily Caller News Foundation today, the campaign never admitted to anything, a spokesman for Ben Carson told the Daily Caller today in response to the hit by Politico.
The political story, this is Doug Watts from the Carson campaign.
The political story is an outright lie.
Politico published a piece Friday claiming Carson's campaign admits fabricating the fact that he applied and was admitted to West.
See, that from the moment I told you about this is exactly what I told you the Politico's purpose was.
They want you to think that Carson never went to West Point, but that he says he did.
Politico published a piece Friday claiming Carson's campaign admits fabricating the fact that he applied and was admitted to West Point.
So they go to the West Point spokesbabe today.
No, we have no application.
He didn't apply.
And he certainly didn't attend here.
So they clearly want ignorant, impressionable, uninformed readers to think that Ben Carson's out there writing in his book that he went to West Point.
And that the political today has uncovered the fact that he didn't.
And do you want to know how successful this is?
I'm not going to mention any names here.
In the opening segment of this program, I'm going through exactly what I just told you here.
And somebody on the other side of the glass shouted to me, doesn't matter, he's toast.
The truth doesn't matter.
He's toast.
Just based on the First exposure one has to the story.
Doesn't matter.
It's over.
He's toast.
Which is exactly what the politico wants everybody that reads this story to believe.
Ben Carson's campaign on Friday admitted in a response to an inquiry from Politico that a central point in his personal story was fabricated.
His application and acceptance to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point writes Kyle Cheney in the political lead.
Excuse me, why separate paper.
The Carson campaign disputes Politico's claim unsubstantiated that he ever claimed to have applied to West Point or even had been admitted.
He never said he was admitted.
He never said that he was that he applied.
He never said he attended.
This is the full statement from uh campaign aid Watts to the Daily Caller.
Dr. Carson was the top ROTC student in the city of Detroit.
In that role, he was invited to meet General Westmoreland.
He believes it was at a banquet.
He can't remember with specificity their brief conversation, but it centered around Dr. Carson's performance as ROTC city executive officer.
He was introduced to people from West Point by his ROTC supervisors.
They told him they could help him get an appointment based on his grades and performance in ROTC.
He considered it.
But in the end, he did not seek admission.
This is he's never maintained that he sought admission and never maintained that he attended.
And the political story today is designed to make you think that he did both of those things and lied about it.
The political story, it says here, is an outright lie.
Dr. Carson, as the leading ROTC student in Detroit, was told by his commanders he could get an appointment to the academy.
He never said he was admitted or even applied.
The campaign never admitted to anything.
This is what we have come to expect from Politico.
Political reporter Kyle Cheney, who has the byline on the Carson story, did not immediately respond to multiple requests for comment from the Daily Caller.
So the Carson campaigns acted fast to turn this back onto the politico using the Daily Caller and a number of other sources, and now the politico will not respond.
And I tell you what's going to the the this the truth of this is going to be ignored.
I guarantee you that CNN, the rest of these people are going to run with the original premise.
And all they have to do is say Politico today allege.
That's all they've got to do.
And it's going to be one of these seriousness of the charge deals.
Oh, this is a serious charge.
Dr. Carson lied about going to West Point.
This is a serious charge.
This must be looked at.
We must look into that.
And the politico got the ball rolling today by suggesting that the Carson campaign admitted that the candidate lied about it.
And then they'll take it from there.
And by so doing, continue injecting the false premise, the false narrative into the news cycle and cover and mask, maybe even omit the campaign's denials.
But my original suspicion about this has, and it was easy, has uh has been confirmed.
They want people to think Carson's been telling people and wrote that he attended West Point because William Westmoreland greased the skids and got him in.
But he's never said that.
The political says he's been out examined.
Trump, of course, is tweeting now, saying that uh Carson's hallucinating.
And this is not it's not good for the campaign.
I mean, our leaders out there hallucinating, it's no wonder we got problems.
Anyway, brief time out.
It's open line Friday.
We'll get back to your phones uh after this.
Don't call it.
I want to show you how this works.
I'm going to share with you some headlines that have run during the course of this program.
And I want to preface it by saying the only people lying here are the politico.
The only liar in this whole story is the politico.
Well, actually, there's more than that because every other news organization that has reported and parroted the story is furthering the lie.
Politico is totally lying.
Ben Carson never said he accepted an invitation to West Point.
He never applied.
He never attended.
He has been up for even admitted to Charlie Rose in an interview last month.
Yeah, I was told I could go to West Point, but I told him that was not the way I wanted to go in life.
I wanted to go into Metis.
He's never misrepresented this.
This is a this is an assassination attempt.
This this piece today is a political assassination attempt following on the heels of that CNBC debate.
Here's some headlines.
Business Insider.
Ben Carson lied about his history with West Point.
New York Daily News.
Ben Carson admits he lied about West Point scholarship, insists stories about troubled childhood are true.
From Alabama.com, Ben Carson campaign retracts West Point story.
They've done no such thing.
New York Times.
Ben Carson admits he was never accepted to West Point.
Hey, New York Times, he never said he was.
Washington Post.
Why Ben Carson's West Point scholarship claim made no sense from the beginning.
He never made a claim about West Point.
He never claimed to attend.
He never claimed to apply.
He never claimed anything.
CBS News.
Ben Carson's campaign admits he never applied to West Point USA Today.
Ben Carson admits fabricating West Point's story, report says NBC News.
Ben Carson never applied to West Point campaign says.
Newsweek report, Ben Carson lied about acceptance into West Point.
Fortune magazine, Ben Carson just admitted to a serious lie.
This is Friday, November 6th, is the assassination attempt of Ben Carson undertaken by the United States American media.
The United States mainstream media today attempted to politically end Carson's bid for the Republican presidential nomination by telling an outright lie and then accusing the campaign of lying and admitting to lying.
Which is horrible.
It is despicable.
It is infuriating.
And I'm telling you, it is this kind of thing that is causing a majority of Americans to reject the mainstream media, the establishment political structure of Washington, and everything they have to do with.
This is exactly what the mainstream media used to be able to get away with when they had a monopoly.
This is what the news was when they had a monopoly.
There was no daily caller reacting to it.
There was no me.
There was no alternative media correcting the record.
When the mainstream media set out to destroy you, this is exactly how it happened.
And they continue to do it, hoping to prove to themselves that they still have the ability to do it, since their monopoly has been blown.
Salon.com, Ben Carson's stealing valor.
GOP Hopeful admits to lying about West Point scholarship.
Fox Business, Carson campaign admits West Point story is false.
I think what we have here is an electronic lynching.
We have an electronic lynching being conducted against a Republican African American candidate by a majority white mainstream American liberal media.
Where if you're not a good liberal and a good African American on their plantation, they gonna take you out.
And we are witnessing it.
It's the same thing, folks, that happened to Clarence Thomas back in 1990, I believe it was one.
And again, back in 1991, there wasn't any Fox News.
There wasn't a blogosphere.
There was not, there were just the beginnings of the conservative presence on the website, and there was me.
They talk greater, but there was nothing else.
This is the kind of thing they used to get away with.
This used to be the standard way news happened.
This this is work, this is not character assassination.
This goes way beyond character assassination.
This is an attempt to destroy Carson's reputation, his political future, his career, his credibility, all of it.
This is intended to destroy him.
Like I just told our liberal callers, the only way these people can win.
They think Carson's a lunatic, and they still can't or are not comfortable taking him on in the arena of ideas.
They have to character assassinate and destroy.
This is despicable, despicable stuff.
And we will be back.
Saga continues.
Yes, sir, Bob.
CNBC, Ben Carson got caught.
Who stands to benefit?
No bias at CNBC.
Washington Post with yet another story.
Ben Carson has weird ideas and makes stuff up.
What kind of president would he be?
So here's the thing.
I uh, in addition to the crime that's been committed here, and it it really is, it's a journalistic crime.
Uh Ben Carson is a human being, he's one of the finest human beings that walks this planet.
He's harmless.
The man has saved more lives than most Americans will ever even dream of.
The lives of children.
He came from nothing.
He had a single parent mom.
Look it.
When it comes to character, when it comes to style, when it comes to basic humanity, he's just a fine man.
There are few finer.
Doesn't matter.
Doesn't matter at all.
People who could not hold his doctor smock.
Try to destroy him.
Just because he doesn't think the way they do.
And that poses a big threat.
So they have to destroy him.
And it's just amazing to watch this continue to happen.
And it's infuriating, these people are nowhere near the mettle, the character, the dignity, the decency that Ben Carson is.
Now he can fight his own battles.
I'm not going to treat him here as a helpless victim, but clearly this is a he is a victim, and this is a political assassination that has taken place today.
It's a very cleverly written story filled with a big, fat lie.
Thank you.
And it it in fact it never even asserts the lie.
It requires it's written in such a way as to cause readers to believe something that isn't true.
In order for political to get away with the story, you must believe, whether you've heard Ben Carson say it, whether you've read his book or not, you must believe that he's out there Bragging about going to West Point and how William Westmoreland plucked him from ROTC and greased the skids and got him into West Point free.
He didn't have to pay anything.
That's what you have to believe.
That is the assertion the story makes without stating it.
They create circumstances that that's the conclusion you, as the ignorant reader, will draw.
Well, Carson's out there saying he went to West Point.
He wrote a book.
I didn't know that.
And now he lied about it?
Well, what a scumbag is the way you're supposed to react to reading the story.
If you're a Carson supporter and voter, you're supposed to be so let down that you are going to be you're you're you're supposed to be so depressed, you are supposed to be just so devastated that you're going to give up politics.
You just there's nobody you can put you can't put your faith in Ben Carson.
If you can't trust Ben Carson, then there's nobody in this world in politics that you can trust.
It's not worth it, and you're gonna quit.
And that's what they want.
That is the sole objective.
This is from the same media that's always wringing their hands and wondering why more good people don't get into politics.
These are the same people in the drive-by media that supposedly cry about all the negativity in politics.
And they whine and moan about all the negative ads.
And they hate politics being referred to as a blood sport.
And these are assassins.
These are political assassins.
And the weapons are their computer keyboards and their word processors and their internet lines.
Now, Mr. Snerdley, let me ask you a quick question.
You think this is going to hurt Carson with his primary voters?
You think this could do damage to Carson standing in the polls now with primary voters?
What would you think of somebody who proffered the opinion that it may help Carson by creating even more solid support?
Standing, standing up and defending the guy and becoming even more in solidarity with him, joining forces against this despicable assassination attempt.
And I can't, you know, the politicos become, I mean, that's where the mainstream Republican people go to leak their stuff.
I mean, that's where we find out what the mainstream Republican Party's thinking about things.
And he is leading in the polls.
And they, I don't think anybody can understand how or why, and therefore they don't know what to do about it.
I think Ben Carson leading in the polls had more people bamboozled than Trump.
Trump, they can explain.
Braggadocious, celebrity, funny entertainer.
Carson, dull, speaks softly, not dynamic.
What do you mean he's 10 points ahead of Hillary?
You telling what?
And you know they live and die by polls.
They look at Carson.
I'm talking about Republican establishment too, not just Denver.
They look at Carson and his usurping leap was bad enough when Trump hit it, but now Carson, they can't explain it.
Carson and Trump are both antithetical, but but Carson really, there's, I mean, there's no playbook in the world that tells you to do what Ben Carson's doing to win.
So they don't know how to take him out.
They wouldn't know how to go about it.
They've tried insulting him.
They've tried making fun of him not being able to do math.
They've tried nothing seems to damage his support.
So how about saying he lied about it going to Westport?
Let's try that West Point.
Let's try that.
Let's just tell everybody that this guy lied about West Point.
That's what they're trying to make people believe today.
Let me get back to the phones here, because people have been waiting patiently.
It is open line Friday.
This Bob in Pittsburgh.
It's great to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
Hi, Russ.
Nice to talk with you.
Thank you, sir.
I am in the laundromat business here in the suburbs of Pittsburgh.
And I'm actually selling them because I can't deal with the people and the police are just can't do anything anymore.
They're afraid to.
everybody around me, I feel like I'm I'm drowning in all everybody is on welfare.
And my question is, why isn't welfare reform being talked about in the debate?
Uh well, as a general uh answer to your question, broad-based generality, I would say that at this stage of the campaign, n there isn't a candidate in the world who wants to be accused of criticizing voters.
And when you start talking about people on the welfare roles and being dependent and so forth, uh the media could portray that is heartless uh mean-spirited extremism toward the less fortunate.
And at this stage, my guess is to the extent that they're ignoring it, that would be the primary reason.
You know what's depressing about this?
We we had welfare reform.
Clinton, after vetoing it a number of times, is forced to sign it in order to get re-elected in 1996, and it was working, and guess who came along and tore it down?
Barack Hussein Obama.
One of the first things Obama did uh in his first term was to just tear apart welfare reform on the grounds that it was discriminatory and unfair, just like he shut down school vouchers in Washington, D.C., where poor people can send their kids to decent schools, he got rid of that almost overnight.
Is it a subject that you think will be brought up further on down the road?
I don't know if it will be, but Bob, it's so widespread now.
It's not just welfare.
The unemployment news today, this is this is this is another thing that that that is back asswards.
We economic news 276,000 new jobs created.
We're acting like this is nirvana.
We we need 600,000 jobs a month for four years to replace what Obama has lost.
We're nowhere near even replacement levels and now it's going, yay!
Look at the jobs report.
Unemployment rate down to 5%.
This insults my intelligence.
We don't have 5% unemployment, we've got 20% unemployment.
Bob, we got 94 million Americans not working, not in the labor force.
They're all on welfare, Bob, one way or another.
You're talking about vandals basically coming in and and and ripping you off at the laundromat.
Half of this country's on welfare, Bob.
That's another reason why people aren't talking about it.
Half of the country that votes is on welfare.
And they vote for Santa Claus, Bob, and to them you're Santa Claus.
And you're I I can understand exactly why you want to sell a business and get out of there.
You're it's probably being stolen from you.
Customers in there get harassed by people that want to commit vandalism or crime in there.
I have total understanding, relatability, sympathy for what you're going through, but we've we've succeeded in in letting so many people, Bob, 94 million Americans not working, and they all have an EBD card.
They're all getting food stamps.
They're all getting some form, many of them disability.
They've all probably got cars, Bob.
That's how else they get the laundromat.
They have uh big screen TVs.
I mean, it's it's not it's too many people that that uh that vote.
Serious problem.
As to whether it comes up, depends on Bob, whether or not, as it always does, just how conservative our nominee is.
As to whether because we're talking about a human dignity issue and welfare and dependency destroy human dignity and potential.
And if we don't talk about it, nobody will.
So it remains to be seen.
I I mean I don't run any campaigns, so I can I can't tell you if the issue is uh is gonna hit the forefront.
But we all have our we all have our pet issues.
We all have our I I'm about to blow this town up today.
You would not believe the obstacle course getting to work every morning now.
It is just and I'm thinking the past ten days driving, who do I call?
Who do I call and unload on?
And I realize nobody.
Nobody's gonna listen.
Nobody's gonna care.
It's just so everybody has their pity.
I'm not saying traffic is mine, don't misunderstand.
Welfare reform is yours, uh, and everybody has their their own.
Uh that affects them personally more than any other.
Well, no, no, I'm not I'm serious.
It's it's it's it's bad out there.
It's just it's just I mean, we got never mind who cares.
You know, I know nobody cares.
I'm just Armstrong Williams is uh one of the spokesmen for the Carson campaign and went on CNN this afternoon to reply to the attempted assassination of Carson by Politico.
The campaign, Barry Bennett spoke with Politico, and if you read the entire political story, there are contradictions in the story.
If you read below, Barry Bennett makes it clear that Dr. Carson was at an event.
He can't recall where the event was, but one of the high points was that General Westmoreland and somebody associated with him were there, and they were honoring someone, and afterwards there was a meeting where they discussed the fact that he had very good grades as an ROTC person, and that he should apply to West Point.
Because all of us know that anybody who applies to West Point, if you accept it, it's an automatic scholarship.
Dr. Carson was flatted.
He never followed through, he never applied because he knew medicine was his calling.
It's the political headline that's gotten everybody in an uproar because it's very deceptive.
Wolf Blitzer said this particular case, there was no application, no acceptance, a discussion presumably he had with General Westmoreland to encourage him to apply.
Is that your misunderstanding?
Yeah, and it's clearly in the book, it's clearly his recollection.
And obviously, you know, sometimes people like to print headlines to get people to read.
As I said earlier, if you read the article in its entirety, there's clearly a contradiction from what political as a legend from the campaign to what Dr. Carson's campaign manager, Barry Bennett actually said.
There was no fabrication.
There isn't.
But the headline says it's fabricated, and they say the campaign admits it.
And they didn't.
The only way this would be a story is if Ben Carson said that he went to West Point, that Westmoreland got him in, and he didn't pay anything.
He got into West Point, he went there for four years.
If he had said that, then they'd have a story.
But he never went to Westport West Point, never applied.
There's no fabrication.
All there is a cheap little assassination attempt by Politico, which been picked up by everybody else in the drive-by media today.
And I say, say it's gonna be a run of the mill every day Friday, and the whole thing got blown up right before the program.
I hope you um have a great weekend, folks.
And we will be back here on Monday.
Revd and ready.
You can be damn sure of that.
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