Do you think that a teenager being encouraged by the eventual Army Chief of Staff to apply to West Point would know the difference? If Westy was making the pitch, Carson could have interpreted it as an offer....doesn’t mean that it was a formal offer. I’d view going to West Point as a scholarship, as it would mean that I didn’t have to pay the tuition. Parsing beyond this for a lay person becomes inside baseball.
The fact that he used the word “scholarship” is the key to the whole fabrication. I don’t think he ever had a conversation with Westmoreland.