At some point in the presidential campaign, Ben Carson seemed to be a capable candidate for the GOP nomination, but now, months later, he’s making all the possible mistakes. His last one happened in Iowa on Thursday, when the former neurosurgeon humiliated a fifth-grade kid in front of 500 people, says The Washington Post.
Filling his campaign with inspirational stories on how he was a “ horrible student” and how he managed in the end to do something with his life, Ben Carson wanted to be pointed out as a good example. But he surely messed up on Thursday when he tried another one of his stories.
Careful, Mr. Carson, this might cost you
“The Dumbest Kid in Fifth Grade” is one of the chapters in his book, “Gifted Hands – Kids Edition”, and although the veracity of some of Carson’s moral fables has been questioned, he wanted to motivate some of the fifth-graders that were attending his rally in Cedar Rapids. So he popped the question: “Anybody here in fifth grade? Who’s the worst student?”.
This may seem shocking, but a Presidential candidate really did this, and it wasn’t Donald Trump. Of course the finger-pointing began and one kid from Isaac Newton Christian Academy “won” the title promoted by Republican Ben Carson, claims the same source. “Well, let me tell you, if you had asked that question in my classroom, there would have been no doubt”, said the former doctor.
The student wasn’t that bothered
After the rally, Ben Carson met with the student, a 10-year-old wearing a gray polo and a weary expression, and the GOP candidate tried to make the kid feel better with himself. “So you know what we want from you, right? You’re going to be a neurosurgeon, okay? All right? But all you have to do to turn it around is read. I just started reading and I got to the point where it was my favorite thing in life. And it didn’t take long before I knew more than all those people who said I was dumb. Okay? So you do that, too. Okay?”, said Ben Carson, according to The Washington Post.
Well, at least the student didn’t seem sad about the fact that his classmates “rat” him as being the “worse student”. “I was laughing”, was his response. His mother, on the other hand, expressed a bit of regret. “As a mother, it kind of saddens me that he would be pointed out like that. Personally I know he’s not the worst.”, she said.
All’s well that ends well
Asked by the Register at the end of the rally what were his expectations issued by his question, Ben Carson responded that “I figured people would be pointing around to all different people who they didn’t like.”
In the end, the kid received a book written by Dr. Ben Carson, entitled “You Have a Brain”, and later the campaign posted a picture of Carson with the boy, and said the two “bonded over shared experiences as young kids.”, confirms The Washington Post.
