Ed Schultz Accuses Ben Carson of 'Twisting' VA Tragedy

May 28th, 2014 4:20 PM

While the liberal media was preoccupied spinning Friday’s tragic UCSB shooting to promote their anti-gun agenda, Ed Schultz of MSNBC’s The Ed Show devoted some time on his May 27 program to berating world-renowned neurosurgeon and conservative author Dr. Ben Carson for using the VA scandal to promote his own “anti-Obamacare agenda.”

Schultz blasted Dr. Carson’s efforts to tie in the VA scandal to a larger critique of ObamaCare as cravenly “twisting a tragedy.” As icing on the cake, Schultz grossly took one line of Carson’s out of context to suggest that the doctor was disparaging American veterans and, worse, that he’d love to see more of them injured in future military conflicts. [See video below. Click here for MP3 audio]

“A small number of veterans?! How many more wars do you want to go into, doctor?” Schultz blustered, reacting to Carson’s point that, as a portion of the population, veterans are a tiny percentage, and yet the government can’t help but mess up their health care. If the government can’t care for less than one percent of the nation’s population in specially-designed VA hospitals, Carson reasons, how much more can we expect ObamaCare to work for 100 percent of the American people.

As horrible as events such as the UCSB shooting and the VA scandal are, they also raise very real issues such as gun control and mental illness with the former and the inefficiencies, fraud, and corruption of government-run health care in the latter.

Tragedies and crises do provide opportunities to address these problems head on, spotlighting deeper policy issues raised because of them. The liberal media, however, are only willing to do so when they can spin it to support a liberal agenda and/or prop up liberal politicians they revere.

Here’s the relevant transcript from the Tuesday’s Ed Show:

MSNBC
The Ed Show
May 27, 2014
5:49 p.m. Eastern
1 minute and 11 seconds
                                    
ED SCHULTZ: The doctor is out. Ben Carson. The state party favorite is using the Veterans' Affairs scandal to attack Obamacare. Carson, a former surgeon, says the long wait times for medical attention is a gift?

BEN CARSON (recorded clip): I think what's happening with the veterans is a gift from God to show us what happens when you take layers and layers of bureaucracy and place them between the patients and the health care provider. And if we can't get it right with the relatively small number of veterans, how in the world are you going to do it with the entire population?

SCHULTZ: A small number of veterans? How many more wars do you want to go into, doctor? Carson has made a point to smear the Affordable Care Act with disgusting comparisons.

CARSON: ObamaCare is really, I think, the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery. And it is, in a way -- in a way it is slavery.

SCHULTZ: Ben Carson's mis-diagnosis is leaving Americans sick. If Ben Carson thinks twisting a tragedy fits his anti-Obamacare agenda, he can keep on pretending.