Ben Carson lashes out angrily at media questions about his past

Ben Carson may have come off as a rather subdued sort of fellow thus far in the 2016 presidential race, but he got downright angry on Friday night as he fought with reporters asking him about the bizarre swirl of allegations about his past that have surfaced in recent days.

Friday’s news cycle was dominated by a Politico story which claimed that Carson had lied when he said he turned down a scholarship to West Point. In fact, the site said, Carson had never even applied to the military academy. Carson fought back, saying that he had been led to understand that he would get into the school but declined, and that he had never claimed to have applied. Politico wound up making significant alterations to the piece.

Carson also faced scrutiny over his claims that he was a violent child who stabbed a close friend of his after CNN said that a host of his childhood acquaintances remembered a much different Carson. Carson emphatically said that he had, in fact, stabbed someone.

Then there was a Wall Street Journal story that raised even more questions about whether or not Carson was telling the truth about an incident during his time at Yale.

By the time Carson faced the media on Friday night, he was not happy. Here’s how the New York Times described the encounter:

He turned what has become an almost robotic ritual for candidates under attack — the live and often defensive news conference — into an aggressive confrontation, and at times interrogation, of the reporters’ motives and methods.

“Don’t lie,” he told them, interrupting a journalist’s question.

“That is a silly argument,” he said to another.

Watch video of the dramatic conference below.