Ben Carson said Thursday that while his campaign is cutting back staff, he's in the race for the GOP presidential nomination for the long haul.
"We will be able to continue the campaign until Cleveland," the retired neurosurgeon told
Fox News' "Happening Now" program. "But obviously you always make appropriate adjustments to make sure you accomplish your goal."
Earlier in the day, Carson's campaign said it
planned to eliminate 50 staff positions, or nearly half his staff, in a major downsizing of his campaign, according to The Washington Post.
Most of the cuts will come from Carson's field offices and headquarters in Virginia, the report said, quoting an internal memo and campaign officials. Carson also plans to reduce salaries for campaign workers after finishing in fourth place in Iowa's caucuses, where he got less than 10 percent of the vote.
"This was something we had planned on anyway," Carson told Fox News, noting that there were other cuts a few months ago because of "irregularities and inefficiency."
"There is a lot of inefficiency in the government," he said. "Just because you have the funds, doesn't mean you should do it."
Carson believes people will recognize that his campaign is trying to "create efficiency," a trait that they like to see in their leaders.
"The other thing I would emphasize, this is similar to a baseball game," said Carson. "We don't call the game after the second inning, you take it to the 9th inning and I think we will see changes by the time the 9th inning rolls around."
Also on Thursday, Carson said that he does not agree with rival candidate Donald Trump's call for a do-over of the Iowa caucuses, after it was revealed that Ted Cruz's campaign's grassroots workers told voters that he'd left the race.
"There was a lot of disinformation that was disseminated during the time that the caucuses were going on," said Carson. "I believe that those had an effect."
In one case, he said, his wife went to one of the caucuses, where she learned that a Cruz spokesperson told voters he was dropping out and they should consider changing their vote.
"My wife showed up, and they saw her and they wanted her to speak and she disabused them of that notion. They were extremely happy, a standing ovation for her and we won that precinct," said Carson.
However, he does not think the caucuses can be redone, and he is not calling for that.
"I am calling for people to do what is right as opposed to what is legal," said Carson.
"There is a lot of talk about if this is illegal. It doesn't matter whether it is illegal. It matters if it is right."
But he said there is plenty of blame to go around.
"Why be so anxious to spread a rumor like that for which you have no confirmation, when you have the ability to pick up the phone?" said Carson. "Our campaigns are easily in communication with each other. It would have taken seconds to do that. And I think there were people who obviously knew exactly what they were doing and they had an intent on you know, taking votes that were going to go to me?
"You know, it is water under the bridge, I agree. But I believe that people ought to take note."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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