BABILLAGE FIELDS, NEW HAMPSHIRE — Supporters of Dr. Ben Carson, the 2016 Republican presidential candidate and neurosurgeon, may have winced a bit recently when he told Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that “as a teenager” he would “go after people with rocks, and bricks, and baseball bats, and hammers.” But when he told Todd that there is a story from his teenage years when he “tried stab someone.”
Though Dr. Carson told the NBC host that “fortunately, you know, [his] life has been changed,” pundits are starting to wonder if even with his recent surge in the polls if the evangelical Christian can be taken seriously enough in the general election next year with his numerous presumed gaffes in the last few weeks. Carson’s campaign, sensing that they needed to placate the fears of donors and supporters, had the doctor address his violent past at a press conference held after a rally at a sandwich shop in a small town in New Hampshire.
“I used to be a violent jerk,” Carson told reporters, “but now I’m just a stupid one! In fact if you listen to what I say about the rules of engagement in war, you can tell that I’ve still got a really intense violent streak in me, but I promise that I’m less apt to kill with you a weapon, and more likely to kill you with my stupidity.” Carson told the audience that while he “still gets the urge to punch someone in the face” and he “often times [finds himself] wondering what it would feel like to gut a man in broad in daylight and bathe in his blood,” he is “far more satisfied to be known for thinking and saying utterly stupid things.”
Carson gave the audience a list of the comments he claims make him “too dumb to be all that violent.” He reminded the audience that he’s compared abortion and Obamacare to slavery, that he genuinely thinks if only the Jews had guns there wouldn’t have been a holocaust, that he implied had he been an unarmed student during the recent shooting in Oregon that he’d have convinced other unarmed students to help him rush the gunman, almost certainly guaranteeing at least a few of them would die in a hail of gunfire, and that college campuses should have government monitors to make sure ideas that are being taught and talked about aren’t too liberal.
“All of these statements — whether it’s me saying that no Muslim should ever be president, or that being gay is a choice because some people turn to homosexual coupling when they get imprisoned,” Carson said, “prove that I am far more stupid than I am dangerous now. So I don’t think anyone has anything to worry about when it comes time to vote for me.” Carson then reminded the audience that they have “a rich tradition of supporting absolute nincompoops.”
“George W. Bush was dumb as hell and you guys elected him twice,” Carson said, “so why not take a chance on another dumb Republican with backwards social beliefs and a penchant for blood? If you ask me, you get the best of the Bush administration with me. I’m dumb like Dubya, and horrifyingly okay with killing people like Dick Cheney.”
With just over a year left before the general election, Carson recently jumped ahead of billionaire Donald Trump in a couple of key polls. Carson has never been elected to any public office prior to running for president.
