Carson to shake up campaign staff

U.S. Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson told the Washington Post in an interview on Wednesday he blames his advisers for his drop in opinion polls and plans a shake-up of campaign staff.

But speaking to CNN’s Don Lemon on Wednesday evening, Carson said the stories had been overhyped, repeatedly calling out The Washington Post for its “sensationalism” and insisting that no changes had been finalized.

“I’m looking at every aspect of the campaign right now”. Every little thing is on the table, each job is on the table.

“The key word there is ‘may.’ We’re always going to be looking at it. We’re always going to be evaluating how people are performing” he told Lemon. I mean, we don’t ever claim to be flawless.

In an interview with The Hill on Monday, Carson said his staff is on notice that he’s in charge, that he will have a more active role in daily operations, and that the downward trajectory of the campaign must be reversed. He was coy and responded by saying changes could come as soon as “tomorrow” and certainly before the Iowa caucuses on February 1.

“As things have gone on and as we’ve gotten bigger and as there are more challenges, I’ve had to become more involved”, he said.

And Wednesday afternoon, the campaign put out the written statement with Carson expressing “100 percent confidence in my campaign team”.

Earlier Wednesday, however, Carson told CNN in a statement released by his campaign that he was “refining some operational practices and streamlining some staff assignments to more aptly match the tasks ahead”.

Republican Ben Carson’s continual decline in the polls has led to a top-to-bottom review of his campaign.

When talking to the Associated Press, however, Carson said “personnel changes” could be coming, suggesting he was about to sideline his top aides.

But Carson spent much of his run atop the polls defending his inspirational back-story from intense press scrutiny. Trump found Carson’s rise threatening enough to start branding his rival a pseudo child molester. New Hampshire polling data shows Carson falls well behind Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and three other candidates in that race.

The candidate has wilted under the spotlight, stumbling through a high-profile national security speech before the Republican Jewish Coalition earlier this month; he was panned for mispronouncing Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement in Palestine, like “hummus”, the chickpea dip.

There have also emerged significant questions over the caliber of his national campaign staff, which has not only seemingly failed to prepare the candidate for the spotlight but has time and again failed to capitalize on momentum in the polls.