On Sunday, presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson, speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” doubled down on his comments from a week before when he opined “all lives matter.” Carson stated on Sunday that all the fuss over the “Black Lives Matter” mantra is “political correctness going amok.” He added, “Of course all lives matter.”
Carson had said on Friday, at a conference put together by the black conservative group Freedom’s Journal Institute, “Of course all lives matter. I don’t want to get into it; it’s so silly.”
On Sunday, Carson amended his prior statements, asserting,”What I called silly is political correctness going amok. That’s what’s silly.”
Carson ameliorated his remarks a tad, saying, “[O]f course we should be very concerned about what’s going on, particularly in our inner cities. It’s a crime, you know, for a young black man, the most likely cause of death is homicide. That is a huge problem that we need to address in a very serious way.”
But he would not back down when it came to the crusade against police that’s the thrust of the “Black Lives Matter” movement, stating, “The vast majority of police are very good people. Are there bad apples? Of course. But if you hire a plumber and he does a bad job, do you say all plumbers are bad? Let’s go out and kill them? I don’t think we do that. We need to be a little more mature, but certainly in cases where police are doing things that are inappropriate, I think we ought to investigate those promptly and justice should be swift.”
Carson also took a mild tone vis-a-vis illegal immigration, positing that it would be “impractical” to capture 11 to 30 million illegal immigrants currently in the United States. He warned that people advocating such an action “have no idea what they’re talking about and how much that costs and how impractical that is.”
Carson’s position has been that illegal immigrants should receive guest worker permits, then pay back taxes and future taxes as they start working.
He explained, “It does not give them voting rights, it does not make them a citizen, and if they want citizenship, they get in the back of the line and go through the same process as everybody else, because we cannot neglect the people who have done it the right way,”
Asked whether he was referring to amnesty, Carson said, “They can call it whatever they want to. But we also have to be pragmatic.”
Carson also stated his position as a Washington outsider is useful, and Donald Trump’s candidacy made Carson’s candidacy more palatable. He said:
It’s a tremendous help. It’s a tremendous aid because fewer people are talking about my lack of political experience now. And that’s good because, you know, experience can come from a variety of different places. And certainly the life that you have led, you know, in my case, you know, solving complex problems, being involved in corporate America, starting a national nonprofit, you get an enormous amount of experience doing these things, particularly in solving problems. It’s an erroneous thought that only political experience is expedient.
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