Dr. Ben Carson said the American people were onto the media's "games," and his campaign coffers indicate he was not lying.
The Carson campaign says it pulled in $3.5 million this week after intense scrutiny into his childhood and claims of a United States Military Academy at West Point offer as a standout ROTC student in Detroit.
"We the People have made 10,000 donations each day this week, raising $3.5M this week alone. Thank you biased media," the retired neurosurgeon tweeted Saturday.
Carson's campaign received $20.8 million, mostly in small-dollar donations, this past fundraising quarter, the Hill reported Saturday.
Media outlets went into a frenzy on Friday over a Politico story claiming Carson lied about a West Point offer he was extended by Gen. William Westmoreland in 1969. The website's original headline and lede, which accused Carson of admitting to a "fabrication" in his 1990 book "Gifted Hands," was changed after push-back from the campaign and other newspapers.
Carson's camp says he never had to "concede" any so-called fabrications to Politico because he always said he applied to one school: Yale.
"I knew medicine is what I wanted to do. So I applied to only one school (it was all the money I had). I applied to Yale and thank God they accepted me," the candidate wrote Aug. 13 on his Facebook page.
"There is a desperation on behalf of some to try and find a way to tarnish me because they have been looking through everything. They have been talking to everybody I’ve ever known, everybody I’ve ever seen. 'There’s gotta be a scandal. There’s gotta be some nurse he’s having an affair with. There’s gotta be something!'" Carson said at a press conference Friday in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. "I do not remember this level for scrutiny for one President Barack Obama when he was running. In fact, I remember just the opposite. ... You see, what you’re not going to find with me, is somebody who is going to sit back and let you be completely unfair without letting the American people know what’s going on. The American people are waking up to your games."
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The Republican front-runner said he has seen widespread dissatisfaction with the news media while traveling to promote his new book, "A More Perfect Union."
"My prediction is that all of you guys trying to pile on is actually going to help me, because, when I go out to these book signings and I see these thousands of people, they say, 'Don't let the media get you down. Don't let them disturb you. Please continue to fight for us.' They understand that this is a witch hunt," Carson said at his press conference.
Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh was more even more direct, calling the media's intense focus on the candidate's past a political "assassination attempt" and an "electronic lynching," WND reported Friday.
"I do not know the full story regarding Ben Carson and West Point, or the veracity of the other stories of his past that are now being questioned. But I do know it’s clear that he is a member of a 'club' that is very threatening to liberals – black conservatives," added Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson in a WND exclusive Sunday. "Democrats have had a 50-plus year stranglehold on the black vote, and if they lose their grip they’re done. They can’t allow that to happen."
Peterson is the founder of BOND, a nonprofit organization dedicated to, “Rebuilding the family by rebuilding the man."