Dr. Ben Carson visited The Kelly File last night where he both fear mongered the militarization of police and blamed African Americans for it at the same time.
Host Megyn Kelly engaged in her own fear mongering. In her dramatic introduction, she said, “Businesses have boarded up windows in places and some residents have been told to prepare to be without access to food and water for days potentially in the aftermath which, of course they are concerned, may include rioting.”
Notice anything missing? Like the steps being taken to keep the peace?
Ben Carson, a Fox News contributor until he became a likely presidential candidate, also ignored those efforts.
Kelly introduced Carson merely as, “former director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital and the author of One Nation.”
Carson began his lecture:
I think people really should stop, first of all, and say let’s wait until we get a verdict.
What we’re waiting for is to see whether or not Wilson gets indicted. If he’s not indicted, he will not be prosecuted. If he’s not prosecuted, there will be no verdict. A trial with a verdict, by the way, is a key part of what the protesters want.
Kelly, an attorney, did not correct Carson.
In a condescending tone, Carson continued:
Also, recognize why allow yourself to be manipulated, whipped up into frenzies by outside agitators? All that’s really going to do is result in more militarization of police forces. There are gonna be people who are killed. It won’t just be Michael Brown. There’ll be other people who are killed and seriously injured. And what will be accomplished in the long run?
…Let’s not listen to all these people who are just fanning the flames. I don’t know what perverse joy they get out of seeing people being killed in the streets.
It’s hard to know what Carson meant when he said more people will be killed. Was he suggesting that police will shoot and kill the protesters? That protesters will inspire the police to become more militarized and that will automatically result in more killings? If so, then Carson was implicitly recognizing that police militarization is a problem.
But Kelly didn’t probe. She also “forgot” the people who have used Ferguson to fan the flames of white racial antagonism - even on Fox News.
However, to her partial credit, Kelly kinda sorta suggested the residents of Ferguson might have some genuine beefs: “Some folks who are fanning these flames (may) view this as an opportunity to have their own beliefs validated. But that doesn’t mean that the people they’re manipulating or speaking to don’t also share that belief. I mean, we are told that these residents of Ferguson, who are so upset about this and have been rioting in the past genuinely believe this is a biased, racist police force and that the only thing they can do is make their voices heard in these streets.”
Yet despite a tacit acknowledgment that the police have become militarized – which is another key concern of the protesters – Carson blamed the whole problem on African Americans.
I would just like to point out to these individuals that there were dozens of young men just like Michael Ferguson killed in America today. And they’re gonna be dozens more killed in America tomorrow. And we need to be focusing some attention on what is behind this epidemic. And those lives are very precious. Michael Brown’s life was precious, those lives are precious.
Unless we really start focusing on the real issues that are causing these kinds of problems to occur …I think it’s a social issue. I think it stems from the fact that many of these young men grow up in environments where they don’t learn how to respond appropriately to authority.
Because there’s no father in the home. And as the result of that, they either bump into someone in their neighborhood who is badder than they are, who kills them, or they run into the authoritarian figures of society. In either case, it doesn’t work out for them. We need to start dealing with those kinds of issues or this just continues on and on.
If that’s how you feel, Dr. Carson, then can we look forward to your signing up as a mentor in President Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative? It's worth pointing out that Carson funds a scholarship program that provides small college scholarships to students "who exemplify academic excellence." But why not go work in those inner city communities and directly tackle those "social issues" you think are so crucial?
But my bet is that Carson prefers to just scold and think that that makes him look presidential.
Watch him concern troll below.
What’s funniest about Carson is a quote from the “National Review” when he claimed not to be a member of any political party: “If I were part of one, it would be called the Logic party, and it would be dedicated to commonsense approaches we all should be able to see." And yet, he now purports to be a Republican. If there’s one thing you cannot say about the CURRENT Republican Party is that its Congressional members display either logic or “commonsense approaches” to anything.