We begin today's roundup with CNN's investigation of Republican candidate Ben Carson's claims of a violent childhood.
Sunlen Serfaty, Maeve Reston and Tal Kopan:
Ben Carson said Thursday that the names of two people he has previously identified as victims of his childhood violence are "fictitious." [...] Carson's comments follow a CNN investigation published earlier Thursday that probed his descriptions of his violent past. He has said he attacked a boy named Bob with a knife and hit another child named Jerry with a lock. Carson said Thursday that those names weren't real. [...]
Carson spent much of Thursday pushing back against the CNN probe of his descriptions of his past. Earlier in the day, he said reporters shouldn't expect to find childhood friends or acquaintances who could corroborate his anecdotes.
Amy Davidson at The New Yorker looks at Carson's claims about the pyramids of Egypt:
“When you look at the way that the pyramids are made, with many chambers that are hermetically sealed, they’d have to be that way for a reason.” The King’s Chamber, as he saw it, was not an instrument panel or a power substation, but a big Tupperware container. [...]
There are problems with Carson’s theory. For one thing, there is very good archeological and historical evidence that the pyramids were built as monumental tombs with a religious function; they were first built among complexes of tombs. There is also pretty good evidence of an extensive network of granaries, often associated with local temples. [...]
When Carson speaks about pyramids, he does so with the same pretense of practicality that he brings to many topics. He is a doctor, and a bearer of knowledge, including the news that the standard stories Americans are told, whether about economics, history, or science, don’t add up. [...] A certain number of Republicans turned to Carson because the other candidates seemed even less plausible to them. As the granary theory is to the idea of the pyramids as a giant battery or the work of alien architects, so is Carson to Trump—although, some days, it seems like the other way around.
More on the day's top stories below the fold.
Kristina Killgrove at Forbes:
In the end, does it really matter what Carson thinks about the Egyptian pyramids? There will always be science deniers, there will always be people swayed by pseudoarchaeology, and there will always be people who believe what they want no matter the facts. It does matter, though, because Carson is vying for the job of representing the United States. So it matters that Carson casually rejects hundreds of years’ worth of research because in denying science, he throws the U.S. back into the past. It matters that he brazenly denies the Egyptian people their rightful history because this marginalizes an entire culture and makes the U.S. look like an ignorant bully.
POLITICO's
Katie Gluek says despite the polling, most analysts believe Carson's "lack of policy depth will doom him":
Ben Carson may be flying high in the polls for now, but he can't win the Republican nomination.
That's according to more than 80 percent of Republicans in this week's POLITICO Caucus, our survey of the top strategists, operatives and activists in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. [...]
“As the scrutiny of him becomes more intense, the vague and frankly disturbing lack of understanding he displays of significant policy issues will catch up with him,” a New Hampshire Republican said. “It is surprising that this late into a very intense nomination battle he remains seemingly detached from the reality of [issues].”
Glenn Kessler at The Washington Post finds Carson's claims about the Founding Fathers having no elected experience "absurd". First up, the Carson claim:
“You are absolutely right — I have no political experience. The current Members of Congress have a combined 8,700 years of political experience. Are we sure political experience is what we need. Every signer of the Declaration of Independence had no elected office experience. What they had was a deep belief that freedom is a gift from God. They had a determination to rise up against a tyrannical King.”
And Kessler's takedown:
Carson needs to hit the history books, or at least do a Google search. More than half of the signers of the Declaration of Independence had elected office experience.
Indeed, one reason why the American Revolution was successful is because it was led by men with many years in politics, political action and protest, often honed in the debates held in Colonial legislatures. In many ways, the background of the Founding Fathers undercuts the very argument Carson was trying to make.
And this choice bit where Carson edited his Facebook post about the Founding Fathers after he was caught being completely wrong:
(Update: After this fact check appeared, Carson’s Facebook post was edited to read “no federal elected office experience.”)
Of course, the fact that the Founding Fathers had extensive elected experience at any level undercuts Carson's entire argument.
Vanity Fair's Tina Nguyen examines three other false Carson claims:
While Ben Carson undoubtedly holds a medical degree—and a highly distinguished neurosurgery career—his comments regarding other fields of medicine have often raised eyebrows. [...]
In 2002, Carson received a diagnosis of aggressive prostate cancer, and underwent surgery to treat it soon afterward. He adopted an organic diet as a complementary treatment.
But during a 2004 speech for a group of investors at Mannatech, Carson did not actually credit the surgery for his recovery. Instead, prior to the surgery, he discovered glyconutrients, a type of sucrose purported to enhance communication between cells (and conveniently happened to be produced and sold by Mannatech) [...] It’s nearly impossible to search for the term “glyconutrients” and not see the word “sham” in the same article. (In fact, here’s a paper from the Oxford Journal of Glycobiology entitled “A ‘Glyconutrient Sham.’”) To date, while glycobiology is a legitimate academic field on its own, few studies have shown glyconutrients to have any effect on human health, much less cancer: “It doesn’t really do anything except increase flatulence,” Dr. Hudson Freeze from the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute told ABC.
The Denver Post:
No doubt he's a nice guy. Too bad he's also something of a nut. [...]
Carson's curious views and ignorance of public policy have become an embarrassment. Indeed, he's beginning to make Donald Trump sound like Socrates.
And we end today's roundup with
Jay Bookman's take on Carson's candidacy over at The Atlanta Journal Constitution:
The pyramid fantasy is yet another example of Carson venturing WAY outside his field of expertise and offering opinions with little basis in fact or logic. (And yes, that describes pretty much his entire political campaign). But because Dr. Ben says these things in such a calm, matter-of-fact manner, and because he isn’t wearing an actual tin-foil hat at the moment, well, maybe it’s true then! [...]
As we’ll no doubt see as this latest incident plays out, Carson continues to be the beneficiary of greatly reduced expectations. The thinking seems to be that “He’s an outsider, a neurosurgeon, so of course we can’t expect him to be an expert on foreign policy, history, economics or Egyptology!” All of that’s true, I suppose, but I’m a traditional kind of guy. Carson’s not just somebody at the end of the bar spouting off nonsense, like Cliff the Mailman on “Cheers.” He’s running for president of the United States, and at the moment is the GOP frontrunner.
Is it too much to ask to have a president who actually has a working knowledge of the issues?
