Carson’s comments came amid lingering fallout over Republican Donald Trump’s refusal last week to take issue with a man during a campaign event who wrongly called President Barack Obama a Muslim and said Muslims are “a problem in this country”.
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Republican Presidential contender and Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee (R-AK) said he doesn’t blame Donald Trump for the way he handled the comment and said it’s often hard for him to hear what people in the audience are saying at rallies. “I don’t get into it”, he said, when asked by host George Stephanopoulos whether he now believes Obama was born in the United States.
Mr Trump, who never hesitates while ridiculing minorities, women and his political opponents, hesitated a little, and then he interrupted the man but only to say, chuckling: “We need this question”. “You know our current president is one“. I don’t know if we have to address it right now.
She also called on Trump to “start behaving like a President” and repudiate “the level of hatefulness in a questioner in an audience that he was speaking before”.
UPDATE – 3:30 p.m. ET: Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), a Muslim member of Congress, released the following statement in direct response to Carson and Trump.
“Am I morally obligated to defend the president every time someone says something bad or controversial about him?” This, in part, may be due to the fact that the State of Hawaii does not produce hard copies of birth certificates as do many other states.
A no win situation!” and “Christians need support in our country (and around the world), their religious liberty is at stake!
GOP candidates have since been split over whether to criticize Trump, who has been a vocal skeptic of Obama’s birthplace and faith.
Such a person would have the media savvy to pull off asking such a tricky (and loaded) question on a national stage. “I absolutely would not agree with that”, he said.
Trump said Sunday that he accepted Obama’s word that he is a Christian, but when asked about Obama’s citizenship, Trump responded, “I just don’t want to discuss it”.
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A new poll by CNN on Sunday found that while Trump was still the Republican frontrunner with 24% of support, he had suffered an eight-point decline from earlier in September.
