In an interview with Newsmax’s J.D. Hayworth broadcast yesterday, former GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin somewhat condescendingly praised Ben Carson’s “innocence,” which she said makes the presidential candidate “the antithesis of Hillary Clinton.”

Palin, however, seemed to identify with some of Carson’s struggles to master foreign policy issues, saying that “it is tough, jumping up there on a national stage when you hadn’t been there before to really dig into the idiosyncrasies of some of the issues the details of some of our especially foreign policy issues.”

She added that she admires that Carson is “not letting political consultants or those around him who would ever kind of want to change his message, just not letting anybody try to shape you or mold you into something that some consultant wants you to be.”

All of this, she said, was in contrast to Clinton, who is “still trying to buffalo voters into choosing” her even though she was by President Obama’s side and “shining his boots” while he was “growing government and creating this less secure, less sovereign nation of ours, fundamentally transforming it.”