Presidential candidate Ben Carson has taken a hit in the polls lately, and it’s not difficult to see why.
His latest comments about gay, lesbian, and trans people serving in the military are so beguiling, it’s difficult to surmise what good he thought might come of them.
Speaking to military veterans on Saturday in Iowa, Carson said of out service men and women, “I mean, why do you have to go around flouting your sexuality? It’s not necessary, you don’t need to talk about that, we need to talk about how we eliminate the enemy.”
To say nothing of the fact that he meant “flaunt,” not “flout,” what does Carson think is going on in the barracks at night?
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But he wasn’t finished:
“When our men and women are out there fighting the enemy, the last thing that we need to be doing is saying what would it be like if we introduced several transgender people into this platoon,” Carson said. “You know, give me a break. Deal with the transgender thing somewhere else.”
The estimated 15,500 transgender service members currently serving in the U.S. Military are likely none too pleased to be referred to as “the transgender thing.”
Carson famously claimed in one of his books that he was offered a full scholarship to West Point, the prestigious military academy, only to then backpedal and say it wasn’t a “scholarship” per se (West Point doesn’t even offer scholarships), he was just “introduced to folks from West Point.”
Either way, Carson did not attend West Point, nor did he ever serve in the military.
“All the success I’ve had in life is because of women, so I am never going to say ‘no’ to women, I’m not,” Carson said, adding that he would be “very frightened” if standards were lowered to allow women into the same roles as men.
The event was hosted by the so-called Concerned Veterans for America, a “Koch brothers-funded front group” that is reportedly “the driving force behind efforts to dismantle the VA health care system and trim service members’ hard-earned disability and other benefits.”
