While he is not formally suspending his presidential campaign, Ben Carson said in a statement today that he sees no path to becoming the GOP nominee.
Carson has tried to position himself as the nice candidate in a race of blowhards, although his kindly image probably wasn’t helped by the fact that his campaign was apparently scamming supporters in order to make money for its own operatives. It also wasn’t helped by Carson’s many mystifying statements and his promotion of anti-gay and anti-Muslim bigotry.
One tip-off that Carson’s campaign was a total scam was when it was reported that he had shilled for a quack-cures company that used misleading advertisements to promote its products to people with cancer, HIV, ALS and autism. When called out, Carson denied having “any kind of relationship” with the company … a claim that rather undermined by the fact that he is on video promoting the company.
While positioning himself as a defender of the Constitution and freedom, Carson called for the federal government to stop recognizing Supreme Court rulings and praised armed militias standing off with the government in Nevada. He said that the federal government should begin monitoring of churches, schools, organizations and media outlets “that were anti-American,” specifically calling for government monitoring of classrooms and libraries.
Fearing that non-citizens were illegally voting in U.S. elections, Carson pledged to deport them and have their “citizenship revoked.”
Carson’s campaign efforts were also not helped by his series of baffling claims regarding the theory of evolution, the founding fathers, Ebola-tainted urine, clothing, vaccines and Egyptian pyramids, or by the fact that he was caught plagiarizing from far-right authors and sharing fabricated quotes from historical figures.
But Carson truly made a name for himself as a vocal opponent of the rights of gay people and Muslim-Americans.
Carson went after gay rights by discussing prison rape with a claim so bizarre that even Glenn Beck called it “the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard” and warning that marriage equality would legalize pedophilia and bestiality. The gay rights movement, Carson said, was part of a wider anti-American, anti-God, anti-Constitution plot conjured up by communist subversives and the New World Order.
He labeled his other favorite target, Muslim-Americans, as disloyal people who should never be allowed to hold the presidency, likening Muslim refugees to rabid dogs.
Carson also had interesting views on foreign policy, arguing that ISIS would have been stopped if only there were more firearms in Iraq, suggesting that liberals promote marijuana reform in order to distract people from Benghazi, warning about nonexistent college ties between Iranian, Palestinian and Russian leaders, asserting that China has entered the Syrian Civil War and memorably mispronouncing “Hamas” as “hummus.”
But Carson was probably happy just to be running at all, as he frequently predicted that President Obama might cancel the 2016 election.
Obama, Carson claimed, was an anti-American, treasonous, Lenin- and Hitler-inspired, Communist tyrant who has made America resemble Nazi Germany and reintroduced slavery through his health care reform law .
Throughout all this, Carson repeatedly claimed that God was behind his campaign.
But without a doubt, Carson will not leave the political spotlight any time soon, at least as long as there is money to be made.
