(WASHINGTON) -- In a press conference following a rally in Nevada on Monday, presidential candidate Ben Carson told reporters that he saw a video of American Muslims cheering on Sept. 11, 2001, in New Jersey when the World Trade Center's twin towers fell.
When asked by ABC News if American Muslims were cheering on 9/11, Carson said “Yes.”
When asked if he specifically saw it happening he said, “I saw the film of it, yeah.”
Later in the press conference he clarified he saw it from “the newsreels” from the 9/11 coverage at the time.
Communications Director Doug Watts told ABC News later on Monday that Dr. Carson did not stand by the comments.
"He doesn't stand behind his comments to New Jersey and American Muslims," Watts told ABC News. "He was rather thinking of the protests going on in the Middle East and some of the demonstrations that we're going on in celebration of the towers going down."
Watts continued: "He doesn't stand behind his references and apologizes for the mistaken references. It was a mistake on his part and he clearly wasn't really thinking about New Jersey, he was thinking about the Middle East."
Over the weekend, fellow GOP candidate Donald Trump said he saw New Jersey residents celebrating the 9/11 terrorist attacks -- a claim that has been challenged by fact checkers.
“I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down,” he said in a speech on Saturday. “Thousands of people were cheering.”
Trump repeated the assertion to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on
This Week.
“It was well covered at the time, George,” Trump said Sunday. “There were people over in New Jersey that were watching it, a heavy Arab population, that were cheering as the buildings came down.”
The Washington Post called the claim “outrageous” and the independent fact-checking website, PolitiFact, concluded that Trump’s statement “flies in the face of all the evidence we could find. We rate this statement 'Pants on Fire.'”
On Monday, Trump tweeted a link to a Sept. 18, 2001,
Washington Post story:But
The Post's fact-checker refuted the notion that the reported allegations in the story back up Trump’s claim.
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4 comments:
About those 5 men, Joe Cannon has a bit to say...
http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-right-attempts-to-defend-trump.html
Twenty-five minutes after the alert had been sent out, the van was stopped by officers with the East Rutherford Police Department who arrested its five occupants who all turned out to be Israelis.
OK, that was funny.
Cute--by the way--how Trump thinks of holding a tailgate party on a roof, unaware that most people other than him and Romney (with his car elevator) cannot do that.
Elevator Editor:
"Tailgate-style parties" automatically equaling thousands on the basis of "You know, tailgating, it's thousands of people" is fairly amusing too.
Good link to Cannonfire. A can of worms that probably won't get the attention it still deserves.
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