Ben Carson apparently fabricated a story about applying to and being accepted into the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., a Politico report revealed on Friday.
In his 2009 book “Gifted Hands,” the Republican presidential candidate wrote about meeting with Gen. William Westmoreland when he was 17 and being offered a full scholarship to West Point afterward.
“Later I was offered a full scholarship to West Point,” he wrote. But his campaign admitted on Friday that wasn’t the case.
“He was introduced to folks from West Point by his ROTC supervisors,” his campaign manager told Politico. “They told him they could help him get an appointment based on his grades and performance in ROTC. He considered it but in the end did not seek admission.”
The meeting with Westmoreland is now also in question since records of the general’s schedule provided by the U.S. Army didn’t show him visiting Detroit around Memorial Day in 1969 — the period when Carson said he had dinner with the general.
“In fact, the general’s records suggest he was in Washington that day and played tennis at 6:45 p.m,” Politico reported.
Carson may have been a guest at an event the general attended months earlier, Politico reported, but there’s no confirmation of that.
TV news and social media are all over the story as the West Point story is trending on Twitter and being focused on across cable news networks.