Ben Carson implied that presidential rival Sen. Ted Cruz was a false prophet at a Wednesday press conference, though he carefully tried to argue he wasn’t directly targeting him.
Carson called a news conference at the National Press Club to address, “deceptive Iowa Caucus tactics” a clear reference to the fact that the Cruz campaign passed along news reports suggesting that Carson was taking a break from the campaign ahead of the voting, and urging voters to go with Cruz instead. The matter has become central to war of words between Donald Trump and Cruz, with Trump using the Carson story as the basis for charging that Cruz “stole” the Iowa caucuses, which Cruz dismissed as a “Trumpertantrum.”
Cruz apologized to Carson, but Carson was not entirely satisfied.
“Sen. Cruz told me that he was not aware of that when I talked to him and that he did not agree with that kind of thing,” he said. “And we’ll wait and see what he does to demonstrate that. He could very well have not known about it. But it was obvious there were people in his organization who not only knew about it, but who carried it out. Who executed it.”
Carson referenced a line from the Sermon on the Mount, “by their fruit you will know them.”
“When I say, ‘by their fruit you will know them,’ that was the Sermon on the Mount,” Carson said. “And it was in the context, what Jesus was saying, there are some people who aren’t what they seem to be, who say one thing and do another. But you can always tell who they are by their fruit, how they act.”
The verse of Matthew that precedes the phrase Carson quoted is, “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.” Matthew then continues, “By their fruit you will recognize them.”
Carson said, “What I’m saying is that you, the press, and we, the American people, have a perfectly good way of evaluating people. We’ve always had a good way of evaluating people. Will we use it? Or will we ignore it?”
Carson emphasized that he was saying this should apply to all candidates, including himself, but the context made it clear he was raising questions about Cruz’s authenticity.
The famed neurosurgeon declined to say whether Cruz should make staff changes after members of his campaign told precinct captains that Carson was taking a campaign hiatus — which Carson attributed to him flying back to Florida to get a “fresh set of clothes.”
“When I discovered that there were things in my campaign that I couldn’t agree with after really doing an investigation, I made changes, and I think that’s what a good leaders does. If there are things going on that you don’t agree with, you have to make changes,” Carson said. “Now if he agrees with it, he doesn’t need to make changes. It would be hypocritical, wouldn’t it? … So if he agrees with it, no problem.”
Carson, who at one time led in Iowa, also said the questions affected his vote totals on Monday night. According to his sources, Carson claimed he was set to do “extraordinarily well” before the reports emerged. In the end, he finished fourth, with just over 9 percent of the vote. Cruz won with nearly 28 percent, Trump came in second with 24 percent, and Sen. Marco Rubio came in third with 23 percent.
“I think it did, yes,” Carson said. “I was getting a lot of intelligence from a lot of different places saying that I was going to do extraordinarily well, and I do think it affected that.”
Carson is not currently scheduled to step foot in an early primary state until Saturday when he will take to the debate stage in Manchester, N.H.
Carson is currently fifth in the Washington Examiner‘s presidential power rankings. Cruz and Trump are first and third, respectively.
