Liberal pundits have been critical of potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson since he rose to popularity as a conservative political figure after confronting President Barack Obama while serving as keynote speaker at the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast.
Carson, a 63-year-old Detroit native grew up in poverty, is also a syndicated columnist and best-selling author who in 1987 made medical history when he led the team that first successfully separated conjoined twins fused at the head. Carson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Honor, the national’s highest civilian honor, in 2008.
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1. Not long after gaining public attention for his Prayer Breakfast speech, Carson came under fire last year after he made statements that appeared to equate homosexuality with pedophilia and bestiality. Rachel Maddow, host of MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show,” blogged about Carson after he subsequently agreed to be replaced as commencement speaker for the graduating class of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine at the request of members of that class.
“Incidentally, Carson also believes marriage equality could destroy America like the ‘fall of the Roman Empire.’ I’m sure this guy is an accomplished medical professional, but a historian he isn’t it — unless Carson knows something scholars don’t about fifth-century German tribes, it wasn’t married gay people that caused the sack of Rome.”
2. The comedian and host of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" on Comedy Central took shots at Carson and those he worked with at the time on Fox News’ “Medical A-Team.”
Carson and Fox News amicably ended that relationship in November 2014 amid indications Carson would run for president, although Carson hadn’t announced his candidacy.
Raw Story reported that Stewart described the team as seeming “Less like doctors and more like the shady expert witnesses paid by the defense to say, ‘That bullet hole exit wound, I don’t know, maybe that’s a third nipple.’”
Stewart said the A-Team’s purpose was mostly to parrot the network’s talking points on medical issues. He added that Carson was hired at Fox after he made the March 2013 comments that appeared to loop together gays, pedophiles, and people who practice bestiality, according to the Raw Story report.
3. Liberal pundit Robin Marty — former director of special projects for the Center for Independent Media, a progressive online news organization with sites across the country — in
an article on Truth-out.org in November suggested five reasons Carson won’t be elected president in 2016.
Marty said those are: Carson uses outdated phrases like “women’s lib;” he only switched in 2014 to being a Republican from being an Independent; he thinks having a black president has actually made racial issues worse in the United States; he’s in favor of some forms of gun control opposed by fellow conservatives; and his stance on gun control has not been consistent.
“Ben Carson may be many things – pundit, doctor, new conservative star of the week – but his history and policies are such a mish-mash of conservative hot topics that even if he did manage to pull off a nomination out of it, he would subsequently be unable to translate that into a general election win.”
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4. Carson has also come under criticism from Toure Neblett, host of MSNBC’s “The Cycle,” who in March 2013 mocked him as a token “black friend” to Republicans who admired him only to “assuage their guilt” for past racial indiscretions,
according to NewsBusters.
5. NewsBusters also reported that Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s “The Chris Matthews Show,” last February mocked Carson while saying he compared the progressive movement to Nazis.
Newsbusters said Carson while talking about the progressive movement said: "There comes a time when people with values simply have to stand up. Think about Nazi Germany. Most of those people did not believe in what Hitler was doing.”
Newsbusters reported Matthews responded: “Haven't we all learned by now not to go there? No Nazi references.”
5. Chris Wallace considers Carson a friend and has great regard for him,
according to BizPac Review. In a "Fox News Sunday" interview, Wallace asked Carson a tough question in September 2014 about whether putting a brain surgeon in the Oval Office would be akin to having a politician do brain surgery.
“I’m going to be transparent here,” Wallace said. "You and I are friends, I have great regard for you, and we’ve had this question I’m about to ask you we’ve talked about in private, but after looking at Barack Obama, and what’s happened with his lack of political experience over this last six years, wouldn’t putting Ben Carson in the Oval Office be akin to putting a politician in an operating room and having him perform one of your brain surgeries?”
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