If nothing else, Fox News can at least be entertaining. On November 6, the crew of Fox’s “Outnumbered” was in full damage control mode over Ben Carson’s fabrication about being offered a full scholarship to West Point. And how did they handle it? By playing the time-honored Fox News game, “I Know You Are, But What Am I?”
For anybody who missed it, Carson said that he was offered a “full scholarship” to the U.S. Military Academy. But there’s one little problem with that claim: there’s no such thing.
Students attend that, and the other service academies, free of charge following a nomination by a government or military official. Carson’s campaign has since amended his statement, claiming that he was told that he should apply to West Point, but that he told General William Westmoreland, who supposedly made the comment to him, that he wanted to go to medical school.
So how did Fox News handle this? By saying that Carson’s lie wasn’t a lie, it was a “coat of paint” he put on a story he had told repeatedly. According to Fox host Greg Gutfeld:
This is a thing that you’re seeing more and more among people in the public eye. When they have a great story, they still change it. Everybody…he would have been fine with his story, but he changed it. And I think a lie is often a coat of paint you put on a story that you’re bored with.
Okay, maybe. That actually is a surprisingly reasonable assessment. People do change details in stories they have told repeatedly. But Gutfeld couldn’t leave it there.
It is like putting a fresh coat of paint on a story. It’s not like a deliberate, destructive lie like Hillary Clinton on Benghazi.
There has been how much testimony in front of how many Benghazi committees? None has found any deliberate lies or wrongdoing on the part of Hillary Clinton or the Obama administration. But that doesn’t matter, because at Fox News, Hillary lied because “we say she did.”
It’s a hell of a thing, when you have to defend someone telling a lie by claiming that someone else did the same thing. And it’s even more insane when the comparison is totally invalid.
Here’s the video of the conversation, via Fox News:
Featured image via Fox News screen capture
