Monday Dr. Ben Carson said that he, like Donald Trump, saw footage of Muslims in New Jersey "celebrating" the fall of the World Trade Center. Given that this (1) never happened and (2) never freaking happened, this caused consternation in his campaign, which quickly issued word that their own candidate was merely momentarily confused as to whether New Jersey was part of the Middle East, because he meant the Middle East.
Today Dr. Ben Carson weighed in to blame the whole thing on the stupid media asking him stupid loaded questions.
“Yeah, yeah. I thought we were just talking about the fact that Muslims were inappropriately celebrating,” he said. “I didn’t know that they had an agenda behind the question.”
The agenda being trying to determine if Dr. Ben Carson, like Donald Trump, is an unhinged lunatic with little grasp on our own reality. Point taken but Dr. Ben Carson may still get points taken off for ignoring the part of the question that specifically said "in New Jersey," since as potential presidential material you are supposed to pay very close attention to information like that. If your generals come to you with a plan to bomb terrorist training camps, you may well agree to that; if one of them adds "in New Jersey" to the equation one would hope that a President Ben Carson would at least look up from his lunch.
The Donald Trump campaign, meanwhile, continues along their usual path of declaring that the exact facts of things do not matter.
Trump's special counsel Michael Cohen told CNN's “New Day” on Tuesday morning that whether “it’s thousands and thousands or a thousand people or even just one person,” the exact number of people who were celebrating the collapse of the World Trade Center is “irrelevant.”
Perhaps Donald Trump personally witnessed thousands of New Jersey residents cheering 9/11; perhaps Donald Trump read a newspaper account of one person in Pakistan who nodded slightly when asked about it. When it comes to deporting brown people and building walls and deciding who are terrorists and who are not, such details are irrelevant. Donald Trump will tell you what you believe, and only the pedants among us will dwell on the details.
This really has been a perfect little snow globe of the Ben Carson and Donald Trump campaigns, hasn't it? Ben Carson: Wasn't paying attention to the question, don't care, it's the media's fault for asking. Donald Trump: Murderous brown enemies are all around us, and if you ask for evidence you're a loser.