Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson sounded a warning that’s certain to have Democrats sweating the 2020 election even more than they are today.

In a recent interview with Candace Owens, the founder of the Blexit movement, a campaign that encourages African Americans to exit the Democratic Party, Carson said more and more black people are waking up in America.

Carson also said that political correctness is a convenient tool for the left to “frighten people into compliance.”

Owens was talking about looking forward to the day when a Blexit movement is not needed, where black people think for themselves, and Carson intimated that the U.S. may be getting closer to that day.

“What’s encouraging me is – is I go around the country a lot – and I’m talking to progressively more black people who are waking up,” Carson explained. “And, they say, ‘Man, we understand what you’re doing; we really appreciate what you’re doing; thank you for being courageous.’ I hear that all the time now.”

“But, I also run into a lot of people who will say that in private; they will not say it in public – because they are afraid of the consequences,” Carson added. “And that is the whole purpose of political correctness, to frighten people into compliance.”

Owens added that she sees the political orthodoxy changing in America, and more people are realizing that not only do they have a responsibility to think, but they also have a right.

“I think a lot of the American public is much smarter than people give them credit for, and I don’t believe that they are going to be ready to throw away what we have in this country for Venezuela,” Carson said.

The notion that people are afraid to speak out in America today is a testament to the totalitarianism on the left, where dissent from the prescribed narrative is simply not tolerated.

Comedian Karith Foster appeared on “Fox & Friends” on Monday to comment on a series of tweets from actor Rob Schneider about free speech, and she said people are “scared to death to voice their opinion.”

“Nobody is talking to each other. Everybody is scared to death to voice their opinion and its sad,” Foster said. “Like, this is not what should be happening. This isn’t what America was built on, this isn’t what the Constitution is about.”

Carson said last month following the orchestrated controversy over remarks he made about men being allowed in women’s restrooms that political correctness “is going to destroy” America.

“I think this whole concept of political correctness — ‘You can’t say this. You can’t say that. You can’t repeat what someone said’ — is total foolishness and is going to destroy our nation,” he said. “We need to be more mature than that.”