Getty Report: Carson's top advisers question his foreign policy grasp

Two of Ben Carson's top advisers are knocking his ability to grasp foreign policy despite aggressive tutoring sessions, according to a report in The New York Times.

The retired neurosurgeon has bobbled a number of foreign policy issues in recent days, claiming that China has a military presence in Syria and struggling on "Fox News Sunday" to name allies he would seek out to create an international military coalition to combat the Islamic State.


Now, two of his advisers told The New York Times in interviews that Carson is having trouble absorbing facts on international affairs.

“Nobody has been able to sit down with him and have him get one iota of intelligent information about the Middle East,” said Duane Clarridge, a top adviser to Carson on terrorism and national security. Carson needs weekly foreign policy briefings to “make him smart,” added Clarridge, a longtime CIA agent who is seen as a colorful figure.

Armstrong Williams, one of Carson's lead advisers and closest friends, also expressed frustration to the newspaper about the "Fox News Sunday" interview. “He’s been briefed on it so many times,” he said. “I guess he just froze.”

Speaking on Bloomberg’s “With All Due Respect” on Tuesday evening, Williams said Clarridge has played an important role for Carson but also downplayed his role in the campaign, saying Clarridge and Carson have met in person only twice and spoken over the phone “probably four times.”

Asked why he told The Times that Carson “froze,” Williams said Carson intentionally opted not to answer the question because he doesn’t like hypothetical questions. “That’s the word I used, but the fact is Dr. Carson was very dismissive” of the question, he said. “And I know that because I had an extensive discussion with him earlier this morning about the Fox interview. He said he was very dismissive. He just thought it was a silly question.”

Carson's campaign has spent a good amount of energy trying to compensate for a comment in last week's presidential debate in which he suggested China is involved in the conflict in Syria. “We also must recognize that it’s a very complex place,” he said during the debate. “You know, the Chinese are there, as well as the Russians, and you have all kinds of factions there.”

The White House dismissed the notion that the Chinese are in Syria, but Carson stood by his comment. His campaign subsequently said he was referring to Chinese military weapons and equipment.

But Clarridge told The New York Times that Carson relied on a freelance American intelligence operative in Iraq who "overleaped" in implying that Chinese troops are in Syria.

The Carson campaign pushed back on the article, saying the paper took advantage of an "elderly gentleman."

"Mr. Clarridge has incomplete knowledge of the daily, not weekly briefings, that Dr. Carson receives on important national security matters from former military and State Department officials," Doug Watts, a Carson campaign spokesman, told Business Insider in an email. "He is coming to the end of a long career of serving our country. Mr. Clarridge's input to Dr. Carson is appreciated but he is clearly not one of Dr. Carson's top advisors. For the New York Times to take advantage of an elderly gentleman and use him as their foil in this story is an affront to good journalistic practices."

Wiliiams spoke well of Clarridge but did say that he “is probably not aware that Dr. Carson talks to 13 or 14 different people on foreign policy all the time.”

As for Carson, the bottom line is that “on any given day any of these candidates can be asked a question about foreign policy that they cannot answer,” he continued. “Dr. Carson is still on a learning curve. There is much for him to learn. He is not perfect. He will never be perfect, but he continues to surround himself with people and engage people that can enhance his foreign policy credentials.”

Despite publicly aired doubts about Carson's ability to master foreign policy issues, voters still rank him relatively high in the GOP field on the topic. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Tuesday, 20 percent of Republican voters surveyed say Donald Trump is best suited to handle terrorism, followed by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio at roughly 10 percent, and Carson with 8 percent.