AP Photo Ben Carson: America's president can't be Muslim "I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation," he says.

The president of the United States should not be a Muslim, Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson declared during an interview airing Sunday morning. And Islam, a faith professed by some 3 million Americans, is not constitutional, the retired neurosurgeon said.

At the end of his "Meet the Press" segment with NBC News' Chuck Todd, Carson responded to a series of questions related to Donald Trump's failure to correct an audience member at a New Hampshire town hall last Thursday who suggested in his question that President Barack Obama is a Muslim and not an American.


Asked whether his faith or the faith of a president should matter, Carson said, "It depends on what that faith is."

"If it's inconsistent with the values and principles of America, then of course it should matter. But if it fits within the realm of America and consistent with the constitution, no problem," he explained, according to a transcript.

Todd then asked Carson, whose rise in the polls has been powered in large part by Christian conservatives, if he believed that "Islam is consistent with the Constitution."

"No, I don't, I do not," he responded, adding, "I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that."





But for Carson, the matter of voting for a Muslim for Congress "is a different story, but it depends on who that Muslim is and what their policies are, just as it depends on what anybody else says, you know."

"And, you know, if there's somebody who's of any faith, but they say things, and their life has been consistent with things that will elevate this nation and make it possible for everybody to succeed, and bring peace and harmony, then I'm with them," he went on to say.

Obama is both a Christian and born in the United States, Carson said, adding that he had "no reason to doubt" the president.

Todd's question referred to long-running "birther" conspiracy theories in which some claim the president was born in Kenya and is thus not a natural-born citizen. Other versions claim that Obama lost his U.S. citizenship when he lived in Indonesia as a child and may be an Indonesian citizen instead.

At Thursday's town hall in New Hampshire, an audience member stood up and asked Trump: "We have a problem in this country, it’s called Muslims. Our current president is one. We know he’s not even an American. We have training camps growing where they want to kill us. That’s my question, when can we get rid of them?”

“A lot of people are saying that and a lot of people are saying that bad things are happening out there. We’re going to be looking at that and a lot of different things,” Trump responded.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton quickly condemned Trump's actions, while most other 2016 contenders remained silent.

On Saturday morning, in a series of tweets, Trump defended himself, writing: “Am I morally obligated to defend the president every time somebody says something bad or controversial about him? I don't think so!”

He added, "If someone made a nasty or controversial statement about me to the president, do you really think he would come to my rescue? No chance!"

But it was Trump himself who, in in 2011, led a push for Obama to release his long-form birth certificate.

"People have birth certificates. He doesn't have a birth certificate. He may have one but there's something on that, maybe religion, maybe it says he is a Muslim. Maybe he doesn't want that. Or he may not have one. But I will tell you this. If he wasn't born in this country it's one of the great scams of all time," Trump told Fox News' Bill O'Reilly in March 2011.

At the time, Trump told NBC that he had sent investigators in Hawaii, where Obama was born, and that they "cannot believe what they're finding." Weeks later, Obama released his long-form birth certificate, showing that he was born Aug. 4, 1961, at Kapiolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu.

More recently, 29 percent of Americans described Obama's religion as Muslim, Islam or Islamist in a CNN/ORC poll conducted in early September. Among Republicans, that share rises to 43 percent, and among self-identified conservatives, it rises to 45 percent. Among those identifying as tea party supporters, 47 percent said they thought Obama is a Muslim.

The same poll also asked respondents to identify Obama's birthplace, with 59 percent overall saying that he was born in Honolulu or Hawaii, and an additional 16 percent who said that the president was born in the U.S., but not in Hawaii. Thirteen percent said that as far as they knew, Obama was born somewhere other than the U.S., whether somewhere in Africa or in Asia. Majorities of all subgroups surveyed said that Obama was born in Hawaii.