That’s difficult to ascertain
Carson precient reps say Cruz leaders told them Carson was quitting
Before the Caucus started.....all over the state
That Cruz guy Tyler I think was parsing his butt off on Fox
Very unseemly for such a Godly candidate
I’d expect this from Kasich or Bridgegate or maybe even Rubio
And I like Cruz but the more this goes on the walks on water shine gets a darker patina
True and he looked like a deer in the headlights.
Are the Caucus locations behind closed doors with phones banned/jammed? Otherwise the whole story is koo-koo, because the Carson reps would check with their own campaign. Why take the trouble to go to the caucus for your candidate, but not take a small effort to confirm the story.
Has any caucus voter come forward to report changing his vote because of the rumor about Carson, without having checked the story with his own campaign?
I went to my caucus on Monday. There were 7 precincts in the same room. I heard one rumor being passed around before we got started - a candidate was going to show up. Sure enough, Ted Cruz walked in about an hour into the caucus - after 8 or 9 of the candidates had already been given 2 minutes to share why they were supporting their candidate. Some candidate-representatives speeches went a bit long, and we got started a little late because of the high turnout. After the anthem, pledge, an invocation, and the representatives for each candidates spoke, Cruz was given 7 minutes to speak to the roughly 2k people there.
Ted didn’t say anything about Carson, and Carson’s supporter didn’t say anything about false reports. First I heard of this issue was back home when checking things here at FR.
I can’t vouch for ‘all over the state’, but I hung out quite a bit after the vote/counting was done, and I heard zero about this issue.
My understanding of the timeline (all times are ‘ish’):
4:45(I don’t know if iowa/CST time?) tweet from Moody/CNN - reporting Carson returning to Floriday, raising eyebrows
5:30 2 tweets from Moody clarifying stuff
6:30 Rubio supporter tweet says Rubio campaign is alerting precincts
6:45 CNN ‘breaking news’ tv report claims ‘you don’t do this if you want to win’ and stuff like that.
7:00 Cruz staff/rep posts screen capture of CNN report
I don’t know when CNN went back on the air to clarify what they had reported. I don’t know what tweets followed, from who, and I don’t know all of their followers and such...
Cruz apologizes. Carson accepts. Trump and CNN still pointing fingers...CNN still trying to say they had no part in this...they just reported, as breaking news, that Ben was running home to change clothes...really...that is what they are saying...
It was a ‘lawyer’s answer’.
Technically it comported with the facts, but unless you think that the Cruz campaign made a regular practice of updating everyone on Ben Carson’s travel schedule, the whole point of the exercise was to deceive Iowa caucus voters into believing that Carson was quitting the campaign.
If you don’t think that was the purpose, then please explain why the Cruz staff used their time and resources to advertise another candidate’s intention to stop off at home after the Iowa caucus.