“Ben Carson’s remarks on foreign policy have repeatedly raised questions about his grasp of the subject, but never more seriously than in the past week, when he wrongly asserted that China had intervened militarily in Syria and then failed, on national television, to name the countries he would call on to form a coalition to fight the Islamic State,” the New York Times reports.
“Faced with increasing scrutiny about whether Mr. Carson — who leads in some Republican presidential polls — was capable of leading American foreign policy, two of his top advisers said… that he had struggled to master the intricacies of the Middle East and national security and that intense tutoring was having little effect.”
Said one: “Nobody has been able to sit down with him and have him get one iota of intelligent information about the Middle East.”
Jonathan Chait: “The candidate’s advisers are saying on the record he doesn’t know anything, has trouble learning anything, and cannot seem to recall even what little information he has managed to assimilate. I don’t see how a Carson presidency could go wrong.”
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