Ben Carson Hurt More By Bad Publicity Than Donald Trump

A couple weeks back, it looked like Ben Carson would catch up to Donald Trump and clinch the Republican presidential nomination. However, a couple weeks of bad publicity has stopped Mr. Carson in his tracks, although he could easily rebound.

One of the biggest stories about Ben Carson has to do with whether or not he lost his temper and tried to stab a bully when he was a kid. The Daily Beast has the news.

“In one version of the story, Carson attempts to stab a bully with a large camping knife he had been holding. In another, he pulls a pocketknife on his friend while listening to classical music at the friend’s house. So which is it?” asks Daily Beast author Gideon Resnick.

Resnick notes that the story has changed from the first time Carson revealed it two decades ago in a book called Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence. Carson describes the failed stabbing as a very important moment in the process of his growing up. He says he used the fallout from the incident to “find God.” According to the Washington Post, Ben Carson has defended the story.

“For one thing, it happened 50 years ago — half a century ago. For another thing, when people record what I’ve said, they record it in different ways. When you’ve got something from 50 years ago that’s told by many different people, it’s sort of like the party game where you whisper to people sitting in a circle. When it gets to the original person, it’s very different.”

However, the changes of the story have been produced by Carson himself. But this story isn’t the only thing that’s hurting Carson; he has been widely criticized for his poor foreign policy credentials. However, Carson defended himself on ABC News.

“I hope everyone is on a learning curve. In medicine, we have something that is called CME — continuing medical education. It recognizes the fact that things are always in the process of changing, and if you stay stagnant, and you say, ‘Well, I’m up on it and I’ll go relax,’ you’re not going to be very competent,” Carson claimed.

It’s unfortunate, for Carson, that all this has caused him to take a dip in the polls. Mass Live has the latest polling data.

“Despite tying Trump for first place at the end of October, support for Ben Carson’s 2016 White House bid fell eight percentage points to just 18 percent among Republican and GOP-leaning independent voters.”

The article adds that U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, once thought of as completely out of the race, has gained eight percentage points to tie Ben Carson. Trump still leads by a double-digit margin. It appears that bad publicity has not hurt Trump like it did for Carson.

Donald Trump has been accused of racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, etc. But none of this has hurt Trump, who says he won’t be influenced by political correctness. Perhaps, the terrorist attacks in France have helped Trump as well, since he has the most aggressive (and some say unethical) plans to fight terrorism. Do you think Donald Trump will win the Republican nomination or will Ben Carson make a comeback? Let us know in the comments section.

[Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images]