Ben Carson announced Monday his plan to visit Africa in a post-Christmas trip in an effort to build up his foreign policy credentials.
Appearing on “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” Carson said that he’s planning a week-long trip to Nigeria, Kenya and Zambia, which he will be leaving for on Dec. 27th. The former neurosurgeon pointed to his preference to see things “firsthand,” pointing to his trips over the past year to Baltimore, Ferguson and his recent trip to meet with Syrian refugees in Jordan.
“I will be making a trip to Africa,” Carson told the host. “I have a tendency to like to see things firsthand. So you know, I went down to the Arizona border, went to Ferguson, then to Baltimore. You know, I tend to make a much bigger impression, so by going over to Jordan and actually talking to the Syrians themselves, and really getting their perspective on things, very different from what we hear in the media. And it makes a difference. And I think we need to make decisions based on real information as opposed to filtered information.”
“I think a lot of our policy in the future is going to affect Africa,” Carson said, before jumping into why he’s going to the three countries in particular. “[M]y ancestors are from the Kenya-Tanzania region, the Turkana tribe. I’ve had all of that traced back. To Nigeria, I want to get an idea from the people what the effects of Boko Haram are, what people are thinking, to see what the economic situation is there.”
The former neurosurgeon added that there’s a medical school in Nigeria named in honor of him, which he also intends to visit. Carson also told Hewitt that he plans on visiting Zambia because of the Benda twins, who he separated at the head and are supposed to graduate high school this year.
“They were joined at the top of the head facing in opposite directions almost 18 years ago, and this is the year they graduate from high school,” Carson said to an astounded Hewitt. “They’re the first complexly joined twins that have ever turned out to be neurologically detached.”
Carson has experienced a fall in the polls recently, especially in Iowa, where the famed neurosurgeon’s support has cratered. In the Monmouth poll released Monday, Carson fell 19 percent in less than two months (32 percent to 13 percent). Meanwhile, he also fell seven percent from 23 to 16 percent in Monday’s CNN poll. The 2016 hopeful currently sits fifth in the Washington Examiner‘s most recent set of power rankings.
