Ben Carson vows to soldier on despite coming last in South Carolina
HUD Secretary Ben Carson testifies before Congress (Win McNamee/Getty)
Ben Carson has vowed to fight on in the Republican presidential race, despite coming last in yesterday’s South Carolina Primary.
Consistently anti-LGBT Carson placed sixth in the Primary on Saturday with 6.6 percent of the vote, but said he would not suspend his campaign.
“There are news people here who think I’m going to make a concession speech. This is a just the beginning speech,” Carson said.
“What we need is recognition of the fact that the way our country was designed — it was designed for citizen-statesmen, not career politicians,” Carson said last night.
He said he wanted to remind America that the “political class” and pundits should not dictate how the presidential race goes down.
“They believe that they have complete control of our country. They only have complete control if we give them complete control,” he said.
The retired neurosurgeon said he wanted to stay in the race for his supporters.
“I’m getting a lot of pressure to make sure I stay in the race,” Carson told CNN of his supporters. “They’re reminding me that I’m here because I responded to their imploring me to get involved. And I respect that and I’m not just going to walk away from the millions of people who are supporting me.”
Although some have speculated that Carson will go to Nevada for the next contest, as he already has the infrastructure there, before dropping out on Wednesday.
Jeb ‘Jeb!’ Bush dropped out of the race, after coming fourth last night. Here PinkNews looks back at some of the sadder, and most homophobic moments of his campaign.
Donald Trump was declared the winner of the South Carolina Republican Primary, paving his way for the Republican nomination.
Ted Cruz placed third and Marcus Rubio came second with 22.3 and 22.5 percent of the vote respectively.
John Kasich came fifth with 7.6 percent of the vote.
Carson has made a stunning number of homophobic and transphobic statements as he has campaigned for the Republican presidential nomination, including saying that transgender people in the millitary would be a “distraction” and a “social experiment” that the millitary did not need.
He has also stated that he would consider reintroducing don’t ask don’t tell and that he thinks that LGBT people caused the fall of Rome.
