CLEVELAND, Ohio – Following the first GOP presidential primary debate in Cleveland, Ohio, Breitbart News caught up exclusively with GOP presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson after he left Quicken Loans Arena, where the debate was held. Carson said he wanted a question about immigration, so he could tell the American people his plan to handle the 11 million people who are in America illegally.
“I thought in the beginning I wasn’t getting asked any questions – Scott Walker wasn’t either – but I think they tired to correct that in the second half,” Carson told Breitbart News.
“I wanted to get asked about immigration – didn’t get a chance to do that.” He added, “I was hoping someone would ask me about cyber warfare.”
“With immigration, I would have said everybody is concentrating on the southern border, but we have to seal all the borders because it’s not just people from Guatemala we are worrying about – it’s radical jihadists. We must be much more serious about that,” Carson stressed.
He shared his plan to handle the millions of illegal immigrants who are in the country already, explaining, “It’s an unreasonable proposition to think you’re going to round millions of people up and deport them … we have to be realistic.”
“You have to turn off the spigot that dispenses all the goodies – that would stem the flow of people in here,” Carson explained, addressing the increasing entitlement programs via the federal government.
He continued, “Then, I think you have to take care of the 11 million people that are here already and they should have to register and pay a back tax penalty and pay taxes going forward and if they do all of those things they can be registered as guest workers – not as citizens. They can’t vote and they can’t get any of the things that citizens get, but at least they come out of the shadows. If they want to become citizens, they have to get in the back of the line and go through the same process.”
Carson also addressed cyber warfare, telling Breitbart News he believes it is a big issue and wanted it to be a question asked to him during the debate.
“I would have talked about the grid … how vulnerable it is and how easily it is to destroy that and what the consequence of that would be and how we must become much more aggressive in terms of our defensive capabilities,” Carson said. “We have pretty good offense.”
“We must punish people who attack us in the cyber era,” he charged.
Carson recalled his last closing statement where he had a punch line that got a loud laugh from moderator Megyn Kelly and the audience.
“As I was listening – and everybody kept saying ‘I’m the only one… I’m the only one…’ I said okay, I need to come up with an ‘I’m the only one’” – which he did.
“Well, I haven’t said anything about me being the only one to do anything, so let me try that,” Carson said in his closing statement at the debate. “I’m the only one that separated Siamese twins, the only one to operate on babies while they were still in the mothers’ womb, the only one to take out half of a brain, although you would think if you go to Washington someone had beat me to it.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNlRh2Igh8I
On the topic of the next debate, hosted by CNN on September 16th in California, Carson said he is looking forward to it.
“I expect it to be similar. I know Hugh Hewitt will be one of the interviewers, so I know there will be a lot of foreign policy, which is good – I relish that. I wanted more questions on that.”
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