If yesterday’s assertion by Ben Carson that he was putting a lot of effort into campaigning in South Carolina (he’s not, he is taking this weekend off and has only run 182 radio/television ads, all of them in Columbia, SC.) and that he has a plan for moving forward convinced you he was either delusional or dishonest, the balance has radically tipped to “dishonest.”

Today on Morning Joe, Ben Carson was back on the air with Donald Trump’s favorite television host pushing Donald Trump’s favorite attack line

In this video clip Carson claims that the rumors his campaign started in Iowa about him dropping out, rumors that both the Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio campaigns pushed, were “devastating.” According to Carson, the polls showed him doing “significantly better” than the outcome. (Apologies for the lack of a transcript.)

.@RealBenCarson: Cruz’s Iowa rumors were ‘devastating,’ polls showed us doing significantly better than we did https://t.co/xRCwOFPkFs — Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) February 12, 2016

Even were that statement true, that would be more a reflection of the perpetual difference between polling results and the results of actual people casting actual votes. But let’s look at the polling. As you can see, Ben Carson peaked in the October 25 poll at 23.2% and began a nosedive.

When you move to the most recent polls and the outcome, you see that Carson performed two points better than his RCP average and better than all but one of the seven polls closest to the election.

Carson is just flat-out lying. He is lying for two reasons. First and foremost, the faux outrage over this nothingburger lets him continue to gull the gullible. His campaign, right now, is nothing more than a direct mail fundraising scam with the objective of building a large list of donors to be rented commercially. It is no accident that the single largest source of contributions to Ben Carson, as his campaign reported to the FEC, is income from mailing list rental. The second reason is that Carson knows his campaign isn’t going anywhere and he is out to damage Ted Cruz to the benefit of his new BFF, Donald Trump. Likewise, it is no coincidence that Carson made this claim on Morning Joe.