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White House says Ben Carson deserves the media scrutiny

Xinhua, November 10, 2015 Adjust font size:

The White House on Monday dismissed Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson's assertion that no candidate, including U.S. President Barack Obama, had faced tougher scrutiny by the media than he had.

"I don't agree with that statement," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest during the daily briefing. "It's not easy to run for president ... And that people when they make public comments are going to have their claims scrutinized, even if they're claims about their own biography."

When asked whether he thought questions Carson were facing now were fair, Earnest said he did and then insisted "ultimately that's for the American people to judge."

Carson, a retired African-American neurosurgeon, had recently blasted U.S. media for what he considered unfair treatment which cast doubt on elements of his life story. He also brought Obama into the controversy on Friday when he compared the scrutiny he was getting to that of then Senator Obama in the 2008 election.

The center piece of the controversy was Carson's claim that he was offered a full scholarship to attend West Point when he was young. After media fact-checking, the Carson campaign admitted on Friday that Carson had never actually applied for and been granted admission.

Also, a CNN report questioned last week whether Carson's account of violent incidents in his childhood was embellished.

To his defense, Carson said over the weekend that the investigation into Obama's birth certificate were "not even close" to the vetting his campaign had faced and accused the media of trying to take him down because he posed "a threat" to Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton.

"I'm a very big threat, because you know they can look at the polling data, they can tell that I'm the candidate who's most likely to beat Hillary Clinton," said Carson in an interview with NBC News. "They see that, and they worry."

According to NBC/WSJ poll released on Wednesday, Carson was currently the front-runner in the crowded Republican field with 29 percent of support. He was followed by Donald Trump who had stood atop nearly all polls since summer. Endit