At tonight’s GOP debate, Ben Carson said that we’re “not going to hear a lot of polished political speech” from him.
“Well I will gladly confess that I am the only one on this stage with no political title. You’re not going to hear a lot of polished political speech from me, but you will hear the truth and I don’t think you have to be a politician to tell the truth.”
Fact-check? True:
Ben Carson: “My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain.” “On Wednesday, a 17-year-old video surfaced of Ben Carson claiming that the Old Testament figure Joseph built the Egyptian pyramids to store food. ‘My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain,’ Carson said in a 1998 commencement speech at Andrews University, unearthed by BuzzFeed. ‘Now all the archaeologists think that they were made for the pharaohs’ graves. But, you know, it would have to be something awfully big — when you stop and think about it, and I don’t think it’d just disappear over the course of time — to store that much grain.’ Social media quickly overflowed with scorn. Critics — and not just archaeologists — pointed to well-documented evidence that the structures were built as tombs, not granaries. Photos of pyramid burial vaults circulated on Twitter. Soon, Carson’s comments had become a meme with references to the food pyramid and ‘Stargate.’” [Washington Post, 11/5/15]
Ben Carson compared Syrian refugees to “dogs.” “‘If there’s a rabid dog running around in your neighborhood, you’re probably not going to assume something good about that dog, and you’re probably going to put your children out of the way,’ retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson said Thursday in Mobile, Ala.,when he was asked about Syrian refugees. ‘It doesn’t mean that you hate all dogs by any stretch of the imagination, but you’re putting your intellect into motion.’” [Washington Post, 11/19/15]
Ben Carson on climate change: “These are all very complex things. Gravity, where did it come from?” “‘You don’t believe in evolution or climate change, I believe,’ the Republican presidential candidate was asked at a town hall at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. ‘And I was just wondering, do you seriously not believe that climate change is happening?’ ‘Is there climate change? Of course there’s climate change,’ Carson replied. ‘Any point in time, temperatures are going up or temperatures are going down. Of course that’s happening. When that stops happening, that’s when we’re in big trouble.’ […] And later in his three-minute response, he said, ’Just the way the Earth rotates on its axis, how far away it is from the sun. These are all very complex things. Gravity, where did it come from?’” [New Republic, 10/1/15]
Ben Carson said that “marriage is between a man and a woman” and compared supporters of marriage equality to “people who believe in bestiality.” In response to a question by Sean Hannity about his views on gay marriage, Ben Carson said, “Well, my thoughts are that marriage is between a man and a woman. It’s a well-established, fundamental pillar of society and no group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA, be they people who believe in bestiality. It doesn’t matter what they are. They don’t get to change the definition.” [Slate, 3/28/13]
Ben Carson said the Affordable Care Act was “the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery.” “Dr. Ben Carson didn’t mince words: Obamacare is ‘the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery.’ Dr. Carson made the declaration about President Obama’s sweeping health care mandate Friday during a speech at the Values Voter Summit. ‘It is slavery because it aims to make all of us subservient to the government,’ he said. ‘It was never about health care. It was about control.’” [Washington Times, 10/11/13]
Ben Carson said that Thomas Jefferson helped write the Constitution. “During a recent TV interview, Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson was asked which Founding Father impressed him the most. ‘I’m particularly impressed with Thomas Jefferson, who seemed to have a very deep insight into the way people would react and tried to craft a constitution in a way that would control people’s natural tendencies and control the natural growth of government,’ Carson replied during a Nov. 22 broadcast on C-SPAN. Our ears perked up, because Jefferson was an ocean away from Philadelphia during the late spring and summer of 1787 when the Constitutional Convention met at Independence Hall. He was in Paris, serving as minister to France for the Confederation Congress. […] Historians with whom we spoke say Jefferson, at most, deserves a footnote at the end of the credits for sending books from abroad that may have influenced Madison’s thinking. So we rate Carson’s statement False.” [PolitiFact, 11/27/15]