An embarrassed CNN anchor awkwardly deadpanned he "didn't get the memo" after offering condolences to GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson on his mother's passing – only to learn she is very much alive.
"This is the first time I’ve seen you since you lost your mother, and I just wanted to send our deepest condolences on your loss," "The Lead" host Jake Tapper told the soft-spoken retired neurosurgeon. "I know she meant a great deal to you."
"I appreciate that," Carson replied, chuckling. "But she actually sprang back."
"She sprang back?" a stunned Tapper asked.
"It looked like she was on her death bed. We all went down to say our final goodbyes," Carson said. "Everybody started praying, and she sprang back."
"Oh my god. I didn't get the memo," Tapper said. "I just saw the news and said my condolences. Well that's the best news I've heard all day."
A video of the exchange was posted by The Daily Caller.
Story continues below video.
"I've never been happier to be wrong!" Tapper later
told Mediaite, which reports Tapper had relied on
a Washington Post story published May 3.
Carson previously shared the stunning recovery of his mom, Sonya Carson, to
the Daily Caller in a July 8 interview about "Gifted Hands," a movie starring Cuba Gooding Jr. about Ben Carson's life and career.
Carson explained that in May, just before he announced his GOP presidential candidacy, he was told his Alzheimer's-stricken mother had stopped eating or drinking.
"They basically just said, 'this is the end,'" Carson told the Daily Caller. "Take her home. And let her die there. That's news I got the day before the announcement."
But when he and other relatives gathered at her bedside, Sonya Carson surprisingly got better.
"She just all of a sudden bloomed," he said. "She blossomed. And she was back, and she was better than she was before."
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