Ben Carson Talks to Roland Martin About Slavery, President Obama and Political Correctness

Conservative pundit and author Dr. Ben Carson speaks during the 41st annual Conservative Political Action Conference at the Gaylord International Hotel and Conference Center on March 8, 2014 in National Harbor, Maryland.
PHOTO BY T.J. KIRKPATRICK/GETTY IMAGES

For a guy who says that running for president is “not something that I really want to do,” Dr. Ben Carson—world-renowned neurosurgeon, philanthropist and author—sure is making a lot of moves in that direction.

Last month he made his second headline appearance at CPAC, the largest annual gathering of conservative activists; he’s launching a new magazine for black conservatives; and Friday morning, he sat down to talk to NewsOne’s Roland Martin.

If you’ve been following Carson’s transition from physician to TV talking head for the last couple of years, his comments on Martin’s show really weren’t anything new to you. But if you still think of Carson primarily as the guy admirably portrayed by Cuba Gooding, Jr. in the biopic Gifted Hands—the first man to successfully separate twins conjoined at the head—then Martin’s interview treated you to the full range of Carson’s rapidly flourishing political supplication.

He did his usual inveighing against the spectre of political correctness—which has delighted conservative audiences ever since he jammed up President Barack Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast last year.

Despite his ascendance on Fox News and in far-right circles, when asked about being a conservative, Carson hedged, telling Martin, “I don’t like boxes or labels.”

On universal health coverage, he went as far as saying that “if you make health care a right, you also have to make clothing a right.”

Regarding his remark last year at the Values Voter Summit that the Affordable Care Act is “the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery,” to which he added at the time, “it is slavery, in a way,” he didn’t exactly walk his comments back. But after Martin said that that even for those who oppose it, Obamacare doesn’t come anywhere close to slavery, Carson demurred, saying, “I never said it did. I said it was the worst thing since slavery.”

Ah. Glad we cleared that up.

Credit Martin for scoring the interview, and credit Carson for proactively reaching beyond Fox, where he’s a regular commentator, to a black host and network with his for-the-moment-non-party-affiliated platform to an audience that leans closer to the Democrats’ policy agenda than the Republicans.

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Source: The Root | DAVID SWERDLICK