Ben Carson Sets the Record Straight: Didn't Compare Trump to King David OR the Second Coming

Ben Carson says the establishment news media took a comment he said and blew it way out of proportion, claiming he said things about Donald Trump that he never actually said.

Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, who served as the 17th U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 2017 to 2021 clarified the situation recently on Washington Watch with Tony Perkins. 

The former HUD secretary told the Family Research Council president, "Talk about distortion and lies." 

"First of all, I never compared him to King David. I said, if many of the people who hate and criticize Trump today had been alive at the time of King David, they would have said the same kinds of things about him, because of some of the things that he was involved in. But God can use all kinds of different people for different occasions," Carson said. 

"And that was the context in which it was said, and I never said anything about the Second Coming of Christ or any of these things. They just take it and distort it," he added. 

Perkins noted the more that liberal media outlets make accusations "the more we realize there's a total lack of biblical knowledge when we hear what the media has to say and their interpretation of Christianity." 

Calling Carson Exhibit A of this, Perkins said, "If you're going to step into the arena and you're going to encourage Christians to engage and to allow their faith to guide their vote, you just need to be prepared that the legacy media is going to come after you."

"There's no question that they will. The way I kind of look at it {is}, how long can they attack you and what can they do against the backdrop of eternity? So it doesn't really worry me too much. I just need to make sure that I'm in the good graces of God," Carson replied. 

"I don't care too much about whether I'm in the good graces of those who oppose God and God's agenda. Courage is something that's so important to liberty because you cannot be the land of the free if you're not the home of the brave," he added.

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Perkins pointed out how during the Trump administration, the media twisted events to make things appear that were not real. But when covering the Biden administration, they refuse to cover things in order to keep the lid down on controversy. 

Carson, 72, said he was a victim of the media's coverage during his time in office. 

"They said that I purchased a $31,000 dining room table while trying to cut the budget for poor people," he recalled. "And of course, I never did purchase a $31,000 table. The whole dining room suite, which was 17 pieces, cost $31,000. That's a big difference. ...17 pieces, which we never bought because my wife in particular was upset about the prices of things."

And she {said} "I know some wonderful consignment shops where you could get some quality stuff for a fraction of this cost." But the whole thing incited an IG investigation — Inspector General investigation — that cost more than $1 million of taxpayer money over a $31,000 supposed table that was never bought, the former HUD secretary explained. 

When asked why he has been traveling the U.S., Carson said he's concerned about the future of America and the world.

"We've already seen a massive switch in the direction of our country just in the last three years. Imagine what another turn of that kind of philosophy would do. Look at the chaos that's going on in the world. You know, we had a lot of peace initiatives with the Abraham Accords. There was obviously some semblance of camaraderie that was developing there — {now} all destroyed." 

"{Vladimir} Putin was holding off. We've empowered him, quite frankly, with our energy policies, making his oil much more valuable and giving him the resources to carry on the kind of warfare that's going on with Ukraine almost indefinitely while draining our resources. China is being emboldened. You know, chaos is prevailing because we show weakness rather than strength," he continued. 

Carson also spelled out what he thought were the top three issues America needs to get right.

"Well, we clearly are going to have to deal with the southern border with, you know, just an open border with all kinds of people coming in, including terrorists. And if the terrorists aren't coming here and planning something really bad, then they're guilty of terrorist malpractice. That's big. That's a big one," he said. 

"And then the economy, we need to go back and understand what the underlying things are. You know, a lot of economists like to say {the} economy is just cyclical — sort of like a sine wave up and down. It doesn't have anything to do with what's going on. That's not true. It has to do with the fact that sometimes we have people in office who know what they're doing and understand the economy — and sometimes we don't. And so we need to deal with that," Carson continued. 

"And then we need to bring back faith. We need to bring God back into our society. That is the most important thing. The other things will fall in line if we do that," he concluded. 

Carson has been rumored to be on former President Trump's short list of potential running mates. 

Asked about whether or not he'd pick a woman as his vice president, Trump told NBC News in September, "I like the concept, but we're going to pick the best person."