If there is one thing we can count on this election cycle, outside of a wild Donald Trump speech, it’s his surrogates defending him on national television. And no one is better at that than Dr. Ben Carson. On Friday, Carson stopped by MSNBC’s Morning Joe where he fielded questions about the latest allegations that have been thrown Trump’s way, and the interview soon went off the rails.
When asked by BBC reporter Katty Kay if he believed the women who have claimed they were sexually abused by Trump were lying, Carson launched into defense mode. Carson told Kay, “That’s your characterization because you need to characterize it that way to try to make me the bad guy,” and the tension immediately ratcheted higher. In an effort to cope with this chaos, Carson — weirdly — asked for Kay’s microphone to be turned off so he could answer the question: “Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Can you turn her mic off please? Turn her mic off so I can talk.”
The show denied his request and the interview grew more hostile. At one point Scarborough asked Carson, “Why can’t you just give a straight answer?” To which Carson responded, “Why don’t you just listen to what I’m telling you?” Carson proceeded to say it doesn’t matter if the accusers were lying, a claim which Kay disagreed with. He said the allegations are distracting from the larger issue, which is the election: “It doesn’t matter whether they’re lying or not. What matters is that the train is going off the cliff. We’re taking our eye off of that, and we’re getting involved in other issues.”
Carson saying the election going off a cliff is odd, for that’s exactly what the interview ended up doing. But he’s provided a wealth of sound bites and video clips this campaign season as he tried to help defend The Donald on numerous occasions. We have seen him abandon interview mid-sentence to locate his luggage and talk about the plight of the Trump children. And now things are growing contentious.
(Via MSNBC’s Morning Joe & The Washington Free Beacon)
