Dr. Ben Carson has made a number of statements that have resulted in media uproar but much of the controversy is due to recollections of his past. Carson claimed to have sheltered students during race riots at his high school but after interviews with classmates nobody remembered him acting in this way.
“Why would they know about that, unless they were one of those students,” Carson responded.
Carson has also been criticized for his timeline about meeting General William Westmoreland on memorial day in 1969 and being offered a scholarship to West Point.
“Well I know he was there in Detroit…You know it may not have been Memorial Day. But it was sometime during the time that I was the City Executive Officer.” Carson admitted.
Another story that has caused controversy is a circumstance involving an exam while he was at Yale that was shown in his 1990 autobiography “Gifted Hands”.
Carson is obviously fed up with these accusations and has feels that he is being singled out from the other candidates.
“I have always said that I expect to be vetted, but being vetted and what is going on with me —’You said this thirty years ago, you said this 20 years ago, this didn’t exist’ — you know, I have not seen that with anyone else. If you can show me where that’s happened with someone else I will take that statement back,” he said.
Whether or not its true Carson has been singled out and picked on more than the other candidates is up for debate, however, he makes a good point in that elections are plagued with the surfacing of random fact checks about situations that happened 20 plus years ago.
Carson will have to wait till July 18th for the Republican nomination to see whether voters are truly effected by such controversy.