6:41-43pm CST - CNN's Chris Moody tweeted:
6:44pm CST - CNN's Jake Tapper & Dana Bash (video):
6:46pm CST - CNN's Jake Tapper tweets:
6:46pm CST - CNN's MJ Lee tweets (and CNN's Dana Bash retweets):
6:48 CST -- CNN's Nia-Malika Henderson tweets:
6:50pm CST -- CNN's "The Lead CNN" Twitter account tweets (and Jake Tapper retweets) that Carson "will not go to either NH or SC":
6:52pm CST -- CNN's "CNN Politics" Twitter account tweets that Carson "plans to take a break from campaigning":
6:53pm CST - Carson spokesman Jason Osborne Tweets:
6:56pm CST - Cruz campaign emails their precinct captains:
6:59pm CST - Cruz campaign uses their messaging app to tell precinct captains that Carson "will stop campaigning after Iowa."
7:00pm CST - The caucuses began.
7:05pm CST - Carson spokesman Jason Osborne Tweets:
7:07pm CST - Cruz campaign was telephoning their precinct captains, claiming that Carson was
“taking a leave of absence from the campaign trail.” (It's not clear to me whether these
are robo-calls or live callers.) Here's a recording of one of them, which went to voicemail:
7:07 pm CST - A Cruz supporter named Dan Gabriel, who has 98,600 twitter followers, tweets that a source inside Ben Carson's campaign confirmed that Ben Carson is out:
7:08pm CST - CNN tweeted a link to the Jake Tapper / Dana Bash video clip, with this message:
7:19pm CST - Rep. Steve King (Cruz campaign National Co-Chair) retweeted Moody, and added a claim that Carson was suspending his campaign:
7:25pm CST - Carson spokesman Jason Osborne Tweets:
7:29pm CST - Cruz campaign was still telephoning their precinct captains, this time claiming that Carson was “suspending campaigning.” Here's a recording:
7:30pm CST - CNN's Chris Moody tweeted, way too late:
Cruz spin:
CNN spin - February 6 (five days after the Iowa caucuses):
Trump spin - Trump thinks everything is about him.
Carson got wronged, but it was Trump who blew a gasket, because he thought (or pretended to think) it might have hurt him.
But maybe Trump was just in a bad mood because he knew the bankrupcy court was
about to sell
his† insolvent Trump Taj Mahal casino and Scores strip club to Carl Icahn:
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/694963798273323008/photo/1
My interpretation:
†Although Trump's name was and is on the Trump Taj Mahal property, I've recently learned that Trump has actually been only a minority stakeholder in the Trump Taj Mahal & associated properties, for years. So it is not clear whether he was involved in the decision to open a Scores strip club in the Trump Taj Mahal.
Both CNN and the Cruz campaign displayed a shocking lack of integrity.
Breitbart's timeline (Breitbart supports Cruz, but this article seems evenhanded):
(saved here)
TalkingPointsMemo's timeline:
Politifact (which leans Left) says Cruz lied about this in the 2/6/16 debate:
(saved here)
Bill O'Reilly says CNN and Cruz campaign are both at fault:
He's right.
Mediaite (which leans Left) gives CNN a pass, and blames Cruz:
National Review Online's Jim Geraghty says, “The Cruz campaign's move was morally wrong, but so far we haven't seen evidence it was consequential [to the outcome]."
http://archive.is/ArEUD#selection-689.543-689.644
He's right.
Greta Van Susteren thinks Carson was right to be outraged by what the Cruz campaign did:
HuffingtonPost has the email which the Cruz campaign sent, and some additional information:
The Washington Post blames Cruz more than CNN:
RedState.com's foul-mouthed moderator "streiff" banned me for criticizing Cruz's dirty trick:
Here are some screenshots:
http://mooregop.org/RedState_bans_ncdave_for_criticizing_Cruz2.png (snippet 1)
http://mooregop.org/RedState_bans_ncdave_for_criticizing_Cruz2.png (snippet 2)
http://mooregop.org/RedState_bans_ncdave_for_criticizing_Cruz.png (whole page)
Perhaps strangest of all, Politistick (which I think supports Cruz) tried to
blame Rubio, who had nothing to do with any of this:
Dave Burton 2/7/2016 (and revised & extended several times since)