Politics

Ben Carson: Arm Ukraine, Expand NATO, Rethink Russia’s Position on UN Security Council

Published

11 years ago

March 20, 2015

Dr. Ben Carson, center, shakes hands with guests Thursday, Feb. 12, 2015, before The Boyle County Republican Party's "An Evening with Dr. Ben Carsonî at the Norton Center for the Arts on the campus of Centre College in Danville, Ky. Dr. Ben Carson is a world-renowned pediatric neurosurgeon, a highly-regarded motivational speaker, philanthropist, best-selling author, and a potential Presidential Candidate in 2016. (AP Photo/The Advocate Messenger, Clay Jackson)

Dr. Ben Carson, center, shakes hands with guests Thursday, Feb. 12, 2015, before The Boyle County Republican Party’s “An Evening with Dr. Ben Carson” at the Norton Center for the Arts on the campus of Centre College in Danville, Ky. (AP Photo/The Advocate Messenger, Clay Jackson)

(Bloomberg) – The 63-year old neurosurgeon, who recently launched an exploratory committee for a 2016 presidential bid, had called in for an interview with Hugh Hewitt. The California-based host, whose sharp, probing style got him a role in the GOP’s upcoming presidential debates, used the interview to drill down on foreign policy. Carson slipped up, and said the “Baltic states” needed to “get involved in NATO,” an alliance they belong to already. The previous week had seen Carson speculate about whether homosexuality was a choice, and get mocked on Saturday Night Live. This week, the media was browbeating him over foreign policy.

In a statement to Bloomberg Politics, Carson acknowledged that he was constantly boning up on foreign policy. “Although I have visited the Baltic Rim and over 57 other countries around the world,” he said, “I am still in the stage of rapidly learning about the political dynamics of global politics.” And in a short Friday interview, Carson said that he gets a weekly foreign policy briefing from “former military people, some people who worked in the State Department” and “a number of people” who send him advice on their own accord.

“I’m in the process of acquiring a lot of information,” said Carson. “It’s like being in medical school–you acquire a lot of information, you learn very quickly, you learn to process that information. The one thing I don’t want to be lost on the American people is that leadership requires wisdom. You’re going to have access to a lot of experts in a lot of areas. You don’t want to devote all your attention to learning facts on a fact sheet.”