‘This Week’ Transcript: Donald Trump and Ben Carson

Carson apparently lied when he said he attended West Point military academy.

In Carson’s 1990 autobiography, ‘Gifted Hands, ‘ he wrote: “Later I was offered a full scholarship to West Point”.

The Carson campaign said Politico’s coverage was a “purposeful twisting of the facts”, and a defiant and clearly agitated candidates forcefully defended himself at Friday night news conference in Miami.

“He considered it but in the end did not seek admission”, Bennett said.

An infamous American myth, heralded by politicians for centuries, holds that George Washington, at the tender age of six, admitted his guilt by saying “I can not tell a lie” after hacking down his father’s cherry tree.

Carson, 64, a retired neurosurgeon, said he thought he was being singled out and vetted by the media in a way that other presidential candidates had not been.

“If you choose to believe I’m incapable of these acts, it’s a compliment”, Carson told CNN Friday morning.

“This is what it is, it is a bunch of lies attempting, you know, to say that I’m lying about my history”.

“I hope it all works out, because I don’t want to see Ben have problems over this stuff”, Trump said.

CNN’s story pointed out that none of the people interviewed challenged the veracity of his accounts, but said they were surprised at them and did not reflect the youth that they knew.

After a week in which questions were raised regarding multiple parts of Ben Carson’s past, the Republican presidential frontrunner has settled on a time-worn response: The media is unfairly targeting me. Politico described the Carson campaign in its first story as admitting to having “fabricated” getting the prestigious appointment to West Point. His campaign told NPR this afternoon that this was, quote, “a matter of semantics”, that it’s true that he never applied, but that he never said he had applied nor had been admitted. However, Carson claims the scholarship offer was informal and that he never said he officially applied. He says that in a meeting with General William Westmoreland it was intimated to him that he could have a scholarship if he wanted one.

Also, Theresa Brinkerhoff, the chief of media relations at West Point, said that a comment she made to Politico was “misconstrued”.

Camerota: You know it well, just from the short time you’ve been involved in vetting. The network could not find any proof of the violent incidents – like an attempted knifing of a friend – that Carson has mentioned several times during his presidential campaign. Hours later, Politico broke the story of Carson’s embellishment on West Point.

“My job is to call you out when you’re unfair, and I’m going to continue to do that”, he said.

Whether the claims against Carson all shake out, he’s learning something not every candidate can understand.