#_ben carson

Ben Carson, a top Donald Trump surrogate, defended the GOP nominee amid new sexual misconduct allegations on Thursday.

During a “Fox & Friends” interview, Carson accused the New York Times and other mainstream media outlets of being “biased” against Trump when they reported on women leveling groping and other accusations against him.

“There’s an atmosphere that’s been created by the New York Times and others that says, ‘Look, if you’re willing to come out and say something, we’ll give you fame, we’ll give you whatever you need,’” Carson said in response to the explosive report published by the Times Wednesday evening that cited two women who say Trump touched them inappropriately years ago.

Carson, a former presidential candidate who endorsed Trump in the GOP primary, added: “What a bunch of crap.”

.@RealBenCarson: People need to see through the "crap" put out by the mainstream media and focus on the dire situation this country is in pic.twitter.com/t56x7LSB4l

— FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends) October 13, 2016

In addition to those quoted by the Times, at least two other women accused the White House hopeful of sexual misconduct in separate new stories published Wednesday night. All four women — Jessica Leeds, Rachel Crooks, Natasha Stoynoff and Mindy McGillivray — spoke on the record.

The allegations follow the release last Friday of a damning 2005 recording in which Trump is heard boasting about groping and kissing women without consent. When asked about his comments during Sunday night’s presidential debate against Hillary Clinton, Trump denied having ever carried out the actions he described in the recording, insisting it was nothing more than “locker room talk.”

Trump continued to maintain his innocence in light of these latest accusations. His campaign immediately dismissed the Times article as “fiction” in a statement Wednesday night, and accused the paper of launching “a completely false, coordinated character assassination against Mr. Trump.”

The Trump campaign has further doubled down on its defense, demanding that the Times retract the controversial story and threatening to sue the paper for libel and defamation. A Times rep told Yahoo News that the paper wouldn’t back down from the story, which detailed Leeds’ and Crooks’ accounts of Trump touching them without consent.

The phony story in the failing @nytimes is a TOTAL FABRICATION. Written by same people as last discredited story on women. WATCH!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 13, 2016

Trump also bashed bashed Stoynoff’s story, which was published by People magazine. (The fourth allegation, by McGillivray, was published by the Palm Beach Post.)

Why didn't the writer of the twelve year old article in People Magazine mention the "incident" in her story. Because it did not happen!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 13, 2016

Carson who, one day earlier, had insisted on CNN that Trump’s so-called locker room banter was commonplace, reiterated the campaign’s position on Fox News Thursday morning, calling the media’s “obvious” bias against Trump “very disappointing because our system was set up in such a way that the press was supposed to keep the people informed so that the will of the people could direct the country.”