Plagiarism accusations

Carson: Trump plagiarism accusations don't bother me

By Nick Gass

Ben Carson has no problem with reports of plagiarism from Donald Trump’s campaign.

The Daily Caller on Wednesday afternoon reported on uncanny similarities between op-eds that Carson and Trump wrote on the importance of United States territories and commonwealths. Carson’s piece was published Feb. 26 in the Northern Mariana Islands, while Trump’s was published by a Guam outlet on March 9. The report noted numerous instances where words and phrases were the same in both pieces.

“I would say that many of the people that worked for me previously are now working for Donald Trump, so that doesn’t surprise me at all,” Carson told CNN's Erin Burnett on Wednesday evening when asked about the Daily Caller report.

Burnett challenged Carson, asking, "So, in other words, it could be a direct copy, but it wouldn’t be plagiarism because it could be somebody who actually wrote the first one writing the second one?”

“Let me put it this way: It doesn't bother me at all,” Carson said.

The brush-off came the same day the retired neurosurgeon, who endorsed Trump last Friday, defended Trump’s personal attacks against him. “You know, I understand politics and particularly the politics of personal destruction,” Carson told Yahoo News. “And you have to admit that to some degree, it did work. You know, a lot of people believed him.”