Politico’s front page Wednesday is headlined by an in-depth description of how Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign sputtered and eventually collapsed in its effort to stop Donald Trump. But this detailed postmortem includes an extremely misleading, if not outright dishonest, description of Donald Trump’s rhetoric on the campaign trail.
Early in the article, written by Shane Goldmacher and Katie Glueck, the authors recount how the Cruz campaign spread misleading information that Ben Carson was dropping out of the race after the Iowa caucuses. That turned out not to be the case, and was a key piece of ammunition for Trump when he began to tar Cruz as “Lyin’ Ted.”
The blunder, they say, was also serious enough to drive Carson into the arms of Trump, even though Trump was, in the authors’ words, “a man who once suggested Carson was a child molester.”
But Trump never suggested that, and never came close to doing so.
The incident Goldmacher and Glueck refer to occurred in November 2015, when Carson was surging in the polls and emerging as a possible outsider alternative to Trump. During an appearance on CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront,” Trump attacked Carson by citing his autobiography, in which the neurosurgeon claimed to have severe anger issues as a teenager.
“He said he’s pathological, somebody said he has pathological disease,” Trump said. “That’s a big problem because you don’t cure that. That’s like, you know, I could say as an example: child molesting. You don’t cure these people. You don’t cure a child molester. There’s no cure for it. Pathological, there’s no cure for that.”
At no point does Trump ever accuse or even imply that Carson is a child molester, like Politico claims.
Carson himself said as much the very next day. When a reporter in South Carolina claimed that Trump had called him a child molester, Carson immediately shot him down and said the media was twisting Trump’s words.
REPORTER: He called you a child molester. Do you think he owes you an apology?
CARSON: Well, I don’t think he called me a child molester.
REPORTER: He compared your pathology to child molestation.
CARSON: Well, you know, I always find it a little amusing what people in the press like to say. ‘You compare this, and therefore you said they’re the same.’ I don’t buy all that stuff, so those are questions you should ask Donald Trump.
The Daily Caller News Foundation reached out to Glueck by email regarding the article’s description of Trump, but has not received a reply.
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