Dr. Ben Carson officially announced his endorsement of Donald Trump Friday morning, one week after he suspended his presidential campaign.
“Some people have said, ‘well, why would you get behind a man like Donald Trump?'” Carson told reporters alongside Trump. “I’ve come to know Donald Trump over the last few years. He is actually a very intelligent man who cares deeply about America.”
“There are two different Donald Trumps. There’s the one you see on the stage, and there’s the one who’s very cerebral, sits there and considers things very carefully, you can have a very good conversation with him, and that’s the Donald Trump that you’re going to start seeing more and more of right now,” Carson said.
The famed neurosurgeon made his announcement during a press conference at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla. The endorsement arrives only four days before the winner-take-all primary states begin voting on Tuesday, which includes Ohio and Florida, where Carson lives.
After reports of a potential endorsement and hints from Carson himself, Trump confirmed as much during Thursday’s debate, using news of the impending endorsement as another sign that the Republican Party should come together around him as he continues to lead in the delegate count.
Of their past fighting during the campaign, Carson added, “We buried the hatchet.”
“Some people said, but, well, you know, he said terrible things about you. How could you support him? First of all, we buried the hatchet,” Carson said. “That was political stuff. And that happens in American politics. The politics of personal destruction, all that, it’s not something that I particularly believe in or anything that I get involved in. But I do recognize it is a part of the process. We move on, because it’s not about me, it’s not about Mr. Trump. It’s about America. and this is what we have to be thinking about.”
In an interview Thursday, Carson admitted to Fox News Radio that he was “certainly leaning” toward endorsing the real estate mogul. Carson tried to explain that the Trump he sees behind closed doors is much different than the one seen in public and at his rallies.
At one point in GOP race, Carson challenged Trump’s supremacy for the top spot in the GOP field, which brought on an onslaught of attacks from the GOP front-runner against Carson’s life story. Specifically, Trump called Carson a “pathological liar,” and compared his lies and temper to that of a child molester, referring to stories that he tried to hit his mother with a hammer and tried to stab a friend before his belt buckle stopped the knife.
Earlier in the morning, Trump dismissed those his past critiques of Carson, saying it was just “part of the game.”
