Presidential Candidate Ben Carson’s Childhood Questioned By Friends, GOP Candidate Says CNN Report Is Fictitious
Some say presidential candidate Ben Carson’s appeal is that he was raised in an inner-city neighborhood and rose above his means to a position of power. Carson, who was a neurosurgeon before running for president, is heavily relying on his background as an inner-city kid from Detroit to appeal to voters that may swing to either party.
In his book Gifted Hands, Ben Carson describes himself as a troubled young boy who often got himself into violent situations growing up. In one instance, he said he hit a boy with a rock, tried to hit his mother, and attempted to stab his friend in the stomach. He says after having a conversation with God, he became a changed man and had the ability to control his anger.
According to a CNN report, Carson’s childhood friends don’t remember any of these violent episodes that he describes in his book. Nine of his friends went on to tell the outlet that these stories weren’t from the child they recognized while growing up. While they didn’t deny his experiences, one of his childhood friends Gerald Ware was skeptical.
Ben Carson was just caught lying about a major part of his life story https://t.co/Rx2nSNlGB6 pic.twitter.com/RJDTUBXQwj
— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) November 6, 2015
As the Inquisitr reported, Ware said, “I don’t know nothing about that. It would have been all over the whole school.”
Friends remembered Carson not as a menace but as “quiet, bookish and nerdy.”
Carson told CNN at the time, “?Why would anybody know about, you know, private incidents like that? I was generally a nice person. It’s just that I had a very bad temper so unless you were the victim of that temper why would you know?”
The GOP candidate came forward and told CNN about the original report.
“This is a bunch of lies attempting to say I’m lying about my history. I think it’s pathetic, and basically what the media does is they try to get you distracted with all of this stuff so that you don’t talk about the things that are important.”
He continued, “I don’t like to generally bring them in, the names I used for instance, are fictitious names because I don’t want to bring people into something like this because I know what you guys do to their lives?.”
Either way, the fact that Carson may or may not have lied about his childhood in his book from 1990 doesn’t seem to have much of an effect on voters support. As it is, the GOP candidate is taking the lead from GOP candidate Donald Trump.
Ben Carson admits he made up the story about getting a scholarship to West Point https://t.co/k7YgDRcvuP pic.twitter.com/4TBVITtDiv
— MarketWatch (@MarketWatch) November 6, 2015
Additionally, Carson is said to have lied about a full scholarship he was offered by the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Instead, it turns out that the presidential hopeful never applied to the school. Carson’s rep confirmed this to CBS News.
Despite these instances, he’s still ruffling a few feathers. In an interview with Fusion’s Jorge Ramos, Ben Carson suggested that we have separate bathrooms for transgender people.
Of his reasoning, Carson said, “It is not fair for them to make everybody else uncomfortable. It’s one of the things that I don’t particularly like about the movement. I think everybody has equal rights, but I’m not sure that anybody should have extra rights — extra rights when it comes to redefining everything for everybody else.”
The Human Rights Campaign quickly condemned Carson for his comments in regards to the LGBT movement. They called him “out of touch” for his “dangerously transphobic views.”
[Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images]
