Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina admits she was wrong about a claim she made during Tuesday’s debate that Gen. Jack Keane was one of the generals forced to retire early by the Obama administration.
“Bring back the warrior class, Petraeus, McChrystal, Mattis, Keane, Flynn. Every single one of these generals I know. Every one was retired early, because they told President Obama things he didn’t want to hear,” Fiorina claimed during the last GOP debate.
But Keane disputed Fiorina’s claim Wednesday on Fox Business Network’s “Varney & Co,” insisting he never spoke with President Obama. (RELATED: General Keane Refutes Carly Fiorina’s Claim That He Was Forced Into Early Retirement By Obama)
“I never served this administration, I served the previous administration,” he said.
Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Fiorina claimed she got “four out of five” generals right, but host Chris Wallace disputed that.
“Well, three out of five. Petraeus really left because of scandal, an extramarital affair, also the mishandling of classified information,” he said.
Fiorina used the point to show that General David Petraeus and Hillary Clinton are held to different standards.
“Mrs. Clinton still hasn’t been indicted over the same things, so perhaps Petraeus’s dismissal was convenient. I don’t know,” Fiorina suggested. “I would just say that Petraeus and Clinton are being handled very differently by this administration over arguably exactly the same issue, which was the handling of classified information over personal email.”
Wallace responded: “But then there’s Keane, who never served in the Obama administration, says he’s never spoken to Barack Obama. Weren’t you just flat wrong about that?”
“I was wrong about Keane, yes,” Fiorina ceded. “He’s the exception that proves the rule.”
“I was certainly right about the fact that he’s the member of the warrior class,” she added. “I was naming the five warriors of our generation who have experience. Four out of five, I would argue, were retired early out of the Obama administration because they said things the Obama administration didn’t particularly want to hear, but all five of these generals have real experience.
“All five of them have been highly critical of both Mrs. Clinton and Barack Obama,” Fiorina said.
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