Ben Carson on ‘Meet the Press’: ‘All Lives Matter’

By Kenrya Rankin Aug 03, 2015

During an appearance on "Meet the Press" on August 2, 2015, Ben Carson, the black Republican presidential candidate, was asked about his thoughts on the Black Lives Matter movement. He started by saying that it was “silly” for Democratic presidential hopeful Martin O’Malley to apologize for saying “Black lives matter, white lives matter, all lives matter,” at the Netroots Nation convention. Carson called the backlash and accompanying apology “political correctness going amok.”

“Of course all lives matter, and of course we should be very concerned about what’s going on, particularly in our inner cities. It’s a crime. For a young black man, the most likely cause of death is homicide. That is a huge problem that we need to address in a very serious way,” Carson said.

When host Chuck Todd reminded him that black people are more likely to die in police custody than any other race or ethnicity, he said:

We need to look at the whole picture. One of the things that I always like to point out to people is, how about we just remove the police for 24 hours. Can you imagine the chaos that would ensue? The vast majority of police are very good people. Are their bad apples? Of course. If you hire a plumber and he does a bad job, do you say all plumbers are bad? Let’s go out and kill them? I don’t think we do that. We need to be a little more mature, but certainly in cases where police are doing things that are inappropriate, I think we ought to investigate those promptly and justice should be swift.

Watch the full episode here. Carson’s interview begins at around the 40-minute mark.