Housing and Urban Development Secretary, Dr. Ben Carson, introduces President Trump before the president delivered remarks at a Black Voices for Trump rally in Atlanta. The Black Voices for Trump rally took place on Friday, November 8, 2019 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, Georgia.
Transcript
Ladies and Gentleman, please welcome to the stage the honorable Dr. Ben Carson.
Dr. Ben Carson: And, and, thank you for your courage to be here, because in the society that we live in today, it takes a lot of courage to say that you’re supporting President Trump. And, a, you know, it’s it’s really quite interesting how people have tried to manipulate people, and how to intimidate people, and change their minds. This has been going on since we’ve been in America. You know, you go back to the days of slavery, you know, and in a lot of the states there were more slaves than there were owners, so what did they do, they had to divide the slaves. So they told the ones in the house you’re better than the ones in the yard, and the ones in the yard, you’re better than the ones in the field, and then after slavery was over, the light skinned ones, you’re better than a dark-skinned ones, on and on and on it went trying to divide people.
Today they say if you are a conservative than you are somehow an Uncle Tom, your horrible person, your a demon. What a bunch of crap. You know, but you know, it’s been going on for hundreds of years and it’s really time to put a stop to it, so I am very happy to see that you have the courage to come out. You know, it doesn’t bother me anymore because, you know, I only worry about what God thinks, I don’t worry about what these other people think. But, you know, sometimes people ask me what happened to you, you changed? I haven’t changed, I changed about 35 years ago. Because you see, I grew up in Detroit, a bastion of liberalism. They call it progressivism now, they keep changing the name. But anyway, then from there to Boston, a bastion of liberalism, back to Detroit, and then to New Haven Connecticut, a bastion of liberalism, and then to Ann Arbor Michigan, a bastion of liberalism, and into Baltimore, Maryland, a bastion of liberalism. So I had no chance. I was a liberal. I was way out there. And then I did something that Liberals are never supposed to do, I listen to a conservative. I listen to Ronald Reagan, and I said, you know, he doesn’t sound like a horrible racist person. He sounds just like my mother.
And at that point I started thinking for myself, and that made a big difference. It made a big difference in my medical career, too. I didn’t do what everybody else did. I always started thinking outside of the box, how do you solve this problem. And that’s the reason that God gave us these complex brains. Your brain has billions and billions of neurons, hundreds of billions of interconnections. It remembers everything you’ve ever seen, everything you’ve ever heard, it can process more than 2 million bits of information in one second. Would God give you something like that, just so that you can be a sheep and follow what somebody else tells you to do, or to think for yourself.
And, you know, don’t you find it fascinating that so many people say the president’s a racist, he’s a horrible racist. Well, you know, it seems to me like some years ago Jesse Jackson actually gave the president an award in New York City because he opened so many opportunities to black people. Is that what a racist does. And then when he moved to Palm Beach, he was right on the forefront to fighting the club’s who were not admitting Jews and blacks, does that sound like what a racist would do?
He is the one who finally got the Second Chance act done. Does that sound like what a racist would do. When he took office, he brought the office of HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) to the White House so it could get appropriate attention, more money than ever, opportunity zone so that people could take this money and direct it to the places where people did not have opportunities before, an economy where you have the lowest unemployment rates for black people in history, and it goes on and on and on. Let me tell you something. If he’s a racist, he’s an awfully bad one. He needs to go get a lesson from the real racist, the people who look at somebody like you and me and they say, because your skin is a certain color, you have to think a certain way, and if you don’t, there’s something wrong with you, and they start calling you names, those are the real racists.
But, you know, the president believes that a rising tide lifts all boats. He doesn’t believe in identity politics, and that’s why he’s doing things that work for everybody, and we should be happy about that. And the media, they like the pick on him, any little thing, you know, he’s not perfect. I’m not perfect. You’re not perfect. The only one who ever was perfect was Jesus, and they crucified him.
So, you know, think about this. And we need to just look at the big picture, think about all the incredible things that are happening, think for ourselves, and be missionaries. Go out and talk to your family. Talk to your friends. Help them to realize, because see, if all they’re doing is looking at certain media, they don’t even know about these things that we just talked about, that he has done. And so they can perpetrate this horrible image of him being a bad person. It is absolutely not true. I work with him all the time. He’s a wonderful person. He’s become a good friend. You remember during the campaign when we were having a debate and I couldn’t hear my name. I came out I stood there I was waiting to hear, everybody else gleefully walk past. He was the only one who stood with me until they straighten it out. That’s the kind of person that our president is. He’s my friend, and he will be your friend as you get to know him. Ladies and gentlemen the 45th president of the United States, Donald J Trump.