Ben Carson Turns Heat on Reporters in Feisty News Conference

Ben Carson was feisty. He was mocking. He was unyielding. And he was unexpectedly theatrical.

Mr. Carson, the doctor whose soft-spoken and sedate style has madehis rise to the top of the Republican presidential field all the more puzzling, abandoned his gentle manner on Friday night and delivered a powerful public scolding of the news media that has begun to question his celebrated biography.

In the process, 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.

In a stern admonition to the journalists standing just feet away, Mr. Carson declared, “The American people are waking up to your games.”

The performance, at a news conference in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., was mesmerizing at times, in part because of the serious personal questions that have been raised: whether he embellished or even made up crucial episodes in his life story, like the attempted stabbing of a childhood friend and his claim that West Point had offered him a “full scholarship.”

He lurched forward and backward, at one point recoiling from the microphone for effect. But he remained unflustered throughout.

On stage at presidential debates, Mr. Carson borders on soporific. On Friday night, he was animated and combative.

Pressed to disclose the name of the friend he tried to stab in ninth grade, he surveyed the room like a schoolteacher, asking reporters whether, once armed with the person’s identity, they would sign an affidavit pledging to leave Mr. Carson alone.

“Will you do that? Yes? Yes? Yes? Yes?” he asked each of them. Laughter rose from the gaggle of reporters.

Mr. Carson repeatedly turned the inquiries back on the questioners. He asked the reporters to explain to him why, in his telling, they had not investigated Democratic candidates for president with the same vigor, suggesting a deep-seated bias.

“I do not remember this level of scrutiny for one President Barack Obama when he was running for president,” Mr. Carson said, his voice thick with sarcasm. “In fact, I remember just the opposite. I remember saying, ‘O-o-oh, we won’t really talk about that.’ ”

He mentioned the name of a controversial 1960s-era activist whose well-chronicled interactions with Mr. Obama have long offended Republicans. “Bill Ayers,” Mr. Carson said. “O-o-o-oh, he didn’t really know him.”

As reporters tried to interrupt, peppering him with new questions, Mr. Carson dug in. Why are the president’s academic records sealed? he wondered.

“No, no, no, no — don’t change the topic,” he said, talking over a reporter. “I am asking you, somebody, please, why you have not investigated that. I want to know. You should want to know, too.” (Personal academic records are generally not available to the public.)

Mr. Carson is a first-time candidate for public office, with little experience with the kind of live and antagonistic back-and-forths with reporters that many of his rivals have practiced for years.

But he seemed highly prepared for verbal battle, dominating every exchange and leaving little opening for those trying to pick apart his stories.

“I don’t remember the names of the people,” he said, with exasperation, when asked who had offered him a full scholarship to West Point. “It’s almost 50 years ago. I bet you don’t remember all the people you talked to 50 years ago.”

With his mild demeanor, Mr. Carson is seen as a kind of anti-Donald J. Trump in this year’s race: an outsider with warmth and gravitas.

But on Friday night, he offered a version of himself that brought to mind Mr. Trump, the colorful developer.

He mocked and praised news organizations by name, accusing Politico, which reported Friday that he had never been accepted to West Point, of telling “a baldfaced lie.”

which examined his tales of childhood violence by talking to people who knew him at the time, “the most lame investigation I have ever seen.”

“You find random people in the neighborhood,” he said. “What a bunch of garbage.”