Politico retracted staff journalist Kyle Cheney’s Friday report that the Carson campaign had retracted Carson’s story of the candidate being offered admission to the prestigious West Point military academy in his youth, which carries a full scholarship.

“The Carson campaign now claims that what sounded like a retraction to us was instead meant as a correction,” wrote Politico’s editorial staff Friday afternoon.

Later on Friday, Politico also retracted its allegations that Carson claimed to have applied to West Point, noting that the brain surgeon “seems to have specifically said, in his book and elsewhere, that as a poor young black man he could afford to apply to only one school, and he chose Yale.”

On Saturday, Politico further retracted Cheney’s piece, retracting its allegation that West Point does not offer scholarships, after being confronted with advertising campaigns from the military academy that specifically offer “full government scholarships.”

On Sunday, Politico retracted its allegation that Carson could not have met with General Westmoreland in his senior year. Kyle Cheney had originally reported that Westmoreland was playing golf during a Detroit ROTC event that year, “but it turns out the General was in Detroit for another event that year, did attend, and Carson, given his standing in his high school’s ROTC program, would almost certainly have been invited to the inexpensive dinner.”

Politico’s editorial staff reiterated, however, that “we stand by our core allegation, which is that Ben Carson is a black Republican who refuses to prostrate himself before his masters in the Democratic Party.”

In response to the Carson campaign’s statement that “the Democratic Party do not own the black race,” Politico’s editors replied “shut up you shiftless and mendacious ingrate.”