While an official letter of admission would have come from the adjutant general of the Army, who was not Westmoreland, she said it was common for top military officials to recruit the best and brightest high school students. "It was, you know, an informal 'with a record like yours we could easily get you a scholarship to West Point,'" he said. Politico also reported that West Point would have a record of whether he applied in 1969. Meanwhile, Politico published a story midday Friday claiming that the Carson campaign admitted that he "fabricated" an account of applying and being admitted to West Point -- a headline the outlet later softened. He never said explicitly that he had been accepted or even that he had applied. Armstrong Williams, Carson's business manager, said earlier in the day that the candidate has "always been clear that he never applied. Hide Caption 4 of 13 Photos: Ben Carson's career in politics Carson speaks at the South Carolina Tea Party Coalition convention on January 18, 2015, in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. “We updated it to reflect Ben Carson’s on the record response to the New York Times and other new details, which underscore the validity of our original reporting.” 
 
 As the day went on, conservative media voices chimed in to agree with Carson. Carson, 64, achieved worldwide fame for his daring surgeries at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and for his story of rising out of poverty in southwest Detroit. In a story published on Thursday, CNN reported that childhood friends of Carson were surprised about violent incidents he has described in a book, public speeches and interviews and had no recollection of such events. The part of Carson’s life at issue Friday — the “offer” he got, or did not get, from West Point — is a story that Carson has told repeatedly in books, interviews and speeches. “I was offered a full scholarship to West Point,” Carson wrote in his 1990 memoir, “Gifted Hands.” “I didn’t refuse the scholarship outright, but I let them know that a military career wasn’t where I saw myself going. "I wouldn't find that odd, that a general would pursue a discussion to kind of talk to him and say, 'Do you know what West Point would offer you?' "A lot of times people say, 'Why would someone who has had a wonderful career get involved in the dirty world of politics?'
– Ben Carson is not enjoying the level of scrutiny he is receiving from the media—and he certainly doesn't remember Barack Obama receiving the same degree of "vetting" when he was running for president. He called the media "desperate" at a Friday conference, accusing reporters of talking to just about everybody he ever met in a quest to tarnish him. "There's got to be a scandal. There's got to be some nurse he's had an affair with. There's got to be something. They have gotten desperate," he said, per CNN. "Next week, it will be my kindergarten teacher who said I peed in my pants. It's ridiculous. But it's OK because I totally expect it," he said, adding that he remembers "quite the opposite" happening with Obama. Carson took issue with a Friday Politico report that he had "fabricated" a claim to have been offered a "full scholarship" to West Point, calling the story a "bold-faced" lie. The Politico story was later updated to soften the accusation, which centered on what Carson's campaign says was an informal offer, the Washington Post reports. "The words 'a scholarship was offered' were a big deal, but the president of the United States’ academic records being sealed is not," Carson said. He also rejected a CNN story casting doubt on violent incidents he described in biography Gifted Hands, which the Post notes has created the odd situation of "a presidential candidate insisting, in the face of skepticism, that he really did have a history of violence." (Carson's unusual theory about Egypt's great pyramids also attracted a lot of attention this week.)