Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson lamented Monday that the uproar over Donald Trump’s comments about Mexican immigrants indicates some people seem more interested in calling out violations of political correctness than discussing the issue of illegal immigration.
“It’s the P.C. police out in force,” Carson, a former neurosurgeon, said in a Monday interview with The Daily Caller. “They want to make very clear that this is a topic you’re not supposed to bring up.”
It’s been almost three weeks since Trump, in his speech announcing a run for president, accused illegal immigrants from Mexico of being “rapists” who bring drugs and crime into the country. Since then, Trump has taken heat from rival presidential candidates, companies he has business deals with and members of the media who say his comments were offensive.
“It will be interesting to see what their reaction is to the shooting in San Francisco,” Carson said of Trump’s critics.
(Last week, a 32-year-old woman who was shot and killed on San Francisco’s Pier 14. The shooter is believed to be an illegal immigrant with a lengthy criminal history who had been deported several times.)
Carson, no stranger to outcries over his colorful statements, argued Trump’s comments are the wrong thing to focus on.
“What we really need to be talking about is how do we take care of our illegal immigration problem,” he said. “I’ve talked about that extensively. And the key thing is we have to secure all our borders—north, south, east and west.”
“And it doesn’t have to be a fence or wall,” Carson added. “That’s stupid. We have all kinds of electronic surveillance devices, drones, not to mention people. So we can do it. And then turn off the spigot that dispenses all the things that they are coming here to get. Then there won’t be any reason for them to do it.”
“I mean that’s pretty simple, and straightforward,” he said. “And I think everybody knows that. That’s there’s the ability to do it, there’s not the will to do it. It’s too juicy a political football.”
