Ben Carson showed off how resolute and decisive a leader he is on Wednesday, first suggesting that a major campaign shakeup was on the way and might endanger the jobs of his senior staffers—and then walking it right back after talking to said senior staffers.
“Everything. Everything is on the table,” Carson told the AP on Wednesday after hinting that “personnel changes” could come. “Every single thing is on the table. I’m looking carefully.”
Then, in a statement issued in his name shortly after the AP article was published, Carson said he has “100 percent confidence in my campaign team.”
Carson even suggested that the Washington Post had, at a minimum, exaggerated similar comments he made in another Wednesday interview, telling CNN that “I think The Washington Post quite frankly had their story already written before they talked to me and they were convinced that I was going to fire everybody and we were going to go in a completely different direction.” (Well, Ben, since one of the people doing the interview says you told them that “that 'everything' and 'every job' was on the table” … )
Carson’s campaign has some significant money worries despite massive fundraising:
An adviser told The Hill on Wednesday that Carson is on pace to raise about $23 million in the fourth quarter – an astounding sum likely to exceed his third quarter haul.
But the campaign will have spent all of that and more in the fourth quarter, with most of its expenses allocated toward its small-dollar fundraising operations, rather than campaign infrastructure.
The Carson campaign will end the quarter with about $5.5 million in cash-on-hand, after beginning the quarter with more than $11 million, the adviser said.
And Carson is totally taking control of that and “looking at every penny.” But he has total faith in the people who’ve run the campaign up until now, money problems and crashing poll numbers and all.
Normally I’d say it’s time to break out the popcorn, but in honor of the season, maybe Christmas cookies and eggnog are more appropriate.