Dr. Ben Carson, the neurosurgeon who is currently polling in second place for the Republican nomination for president, compared Syrian refugees to “rabid dogs.” He also told reporters that the threat from ISIS was greater than the threat from Al Qaeda in 2001 because flying planes into buildings “didn’t require a great deal of sophistication.”
“For instance, you know, if there is a rabid dog running around your neighborhood, you’re probably not going to assume something good about that dog, and you’re probably gonna put your children out of the way,” Carson told reporters during a campaign stop in Alabama on Thursday. “Doesn’t mean that you hate all dogs by any stretch of the imagination.”
“By the same token, we have to have in place screening mechanisms that allow us to determine who the mad dogs are, quite frankly,” he continued, according to Politico. “Who are the people who wanna come in here and hurt us and wanna destroy us? Until we know how to do that, just like it would be foolish to put your child out in the neighborhood knowing that that was going on, it’s foolish for us to accept people if we cannot have the appropriate type of screening.”
Carson compared need to screen refugees w protecting a child from rabid dogs. Must determine "who are the mad dogs" pic.twitter.com/u98vg7cb6L
— Athena Jones (@AthenaCNN) November 19, 2015
In saying that ISIS was more of a threat that Al Qaeda, Carson explained his rationale this way: “Being responsible for the September 11 attacks, what happened right there really didn’t require a great deal of sophistication because we were not paying attention. We were not coordinating our efforts so you didn’t have to be all that great. You had to be able to fly some planes,” Carson said, according to video captured by ABC News.
WATCH: Ben Carson on al Qaeda: 9/11 attacks "really didn't require a great deal of sophistication."https://t.co/huvGmBG3Jh
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) November 19, 2015
Earlier this week, a New York Times report talked to an adviser to Carson’s campaign, saying that the candidate struggled to grasp the intricacies of the Middle East and foreign policy. “Nobody has been able to sit down with him and have him get one iota of intelligent information about the Middle East,” said former CIA agent Duane R. Clarridge. The campaign told Business Insider that the newspaper took “advantage of an elderly gentleman.”