Whether or not Hillary Clinton ends up in legal trouble for her use of a private email server, her simply having done so creates questions about whether she is qualified for the nation's highest office, GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson said Wednesday.
"How in the world are you going to turn the keys over to [her]?" the retired neurosurgeon told
Fox News' "Fox & Friends" show. "Are you kidding me?"
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On Tuesday,
Clinton's attorney turned the private mail server she used while secretary of state over to the FBI, as well as a thumb drive of work-related emails. Her personal account was linked to a server in her home in New York, and four classified emails have been found on the private email server, with two marked "Top Secret,"
according to McClatchy.
Meanwhile, Carson, who has never held elected political office, is seeing his star rise in the polls.
A new Suffolk University poll in Iowa, which holds the first presidential contest early next year, has him in fourth place, behind businessman Donald Trump, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
Meanwhile, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush slipped to seventh place.
Also, a subset of voters who watched the
Aug. 6 Republican debate said that Rubio and Carson were the most impressive candidates.
Carson said he thinks his numbers are rising because people are listening to what he's saying about "things that affect their lives and the lives of their children and grandchildren. And you know, they're not going to hear just political speaking from it seems to me."
Carson is also in favor of simplifying the nation's tax base, and enacting a plan based on tithing, or giving 10 percent.
"You have to be fair," said Carson. "The current president says the top 1 percent don't pay their fair share. The top 1 percent pays 37 percent of taxes. So if they were paying their fair share, they wouldn't be paying anywhere close to that amount. The key thing is you have to recognize in the history of this nation, how do we go from declaring our independence of 1776 to the No. 1 economic power less than 100 years from there?"
Carson also spoke about the Ferguson protests that have turned violent in recent days, and told the program that he has a deep concern for society's downtrodden.
"I had a program at the hospital where we had hundreds of kids come in, [and] I would talk to them and show them slides and try to get them encouraged," said Carson. "It's just that I don't believe in the progressive model of you poor, poor little thing. That's not getting us anywhere. I'm trying to wake people up."
Carson also emphasized that it's "a false narrative" that he wants to get rid of welfare and social programs.
"That's something the left wing puts out to make me seem like a bad guy," he said. "That's absolutely a lie. I want to get business, industry, Wall Street, churches, community groups involved in investing. That's the only thing that brings people out."
Since the 1960s, he said, the United States has spent $19 trillion on the war on poverty, but now "welfare, incarceration, crime, broken families" are "not only worse, [but] much worse."
Carson said his message, particularly during the debate, is also resonating by the way of donations.
"In the last three business days, we've had $17,000 contributions and $2 million total," he told the show.