Ben Carson raised some eyebrows Tuesday night, when he veered off his prepared remarks at the Republican National Convention to compare Hillary Clinton to Lucifer, by way of a long tangent about the late community organizer Saul Alinsky. Given the opportunity to explain himself the next day, Carson eagerly defended his thesis about their axis of evil by doubling down on the Satan-Clinton connection.
His main concern, he told Chris Cuomo Wednesday morning on CNN’s New Day, was that Clinton considered Alinsky her mentor, and had referred to his famous book Rules for Radicals in her college thesis. Alinsky, meanwhile, had once appeared to praise the devil. “On the dedication page, he acknowledged Lucifer in an admirable way, saying that he's the original radical who gained his own kingdom,” Carson explained. “Please read the book, because it's very interesting how it uses controlled anarchy in order to change us from a democratic republic to a socialist society.”
Carson, a Seventh-Day Adventist, had spent the majority of his convention speech the night before decrying the evils of secular progressivism, asking the assembled crowd whether Americans should “elect someone as president who has as their role model somebody who acknowledges Lucifer.”
On CNN the following morning, Carson said he didn’t believe Clinton was a pure Alinskyite, but that Alinsky’s socialist ideology may have influenced her own. Combined with her seeming incompetence at handling classified information after years of high-profile public service, Carson said he felt that it was completely appropriate to say that Satan may have had a hand in it.
Carson was unswayed by Cuomo’s apparent incredulousness at this line of thinking. “Again, when you look at the principles that are espoused by Christ, by Christianity, and you look at what’s espoused by evil, and then you look at things like killing babies, you look at things like redefining marriage away from what the biblical definition is, I think that there’s pretty good consistency there,” Carson said.
“But don’t you think it’s a little dangerous to tie gay marriage, equality of marriage, respect of L.G.B.T., with being evil?” Cuomo pushed back. “Don't you think that's a little bit too far, once again?”
“Well again, that’s your interpretation,” Carson replied.
A baffled Cuomo brought up Carson’s own history of excusing his own previous behavior—such as trying to stab a friend when he was a young man—and asked why Carson was so quick to excuse his own past while hammering Clinton’s undergraduate Alinsky connection. “It was an obvious basis and something that was personally important to her in 1969. I think there’s no question about that,” he elaborated. “It’s just what you choose to use as criticism, especially as somebody who has said many times, don’t judge me by something that long ago, judge me by right now.”
“Except you have to also use your brain,” insisted Carson. “And you say, if she believed that at that time—and now you look at her actions—you look at what she advocates, the killing of babies, the dissolution of the traditional family, all these kinds of things—those are pretty consistent, quite frankly.”
