Fresh off of a visit to the Syrian refugee camps in Jordan, GOP presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson came away thinking the United States needs to do more to support the country that is housing thousands of refugees.
“The facilities that have been offered to them [refugees] here in Jordan are very satisfactory. And when I asked them what Americans could do, they said, ‘If Americans could support those facilities to a greater degree,’ because they have much more capacity here in Jordan,” Carson said in an interview via satellite on NBC’s “Meet The Press” Sunday.
When asked whether he had second thoughts about using the term “rabid dogs” earlier this month when discussing Syrian refugees, he said the Syrian people understood what he meant.
“It’s only the news media in our country that thinks that you’re calling Syrians dogs. They understand here that we’re talking about the jihadists, the Islamic terrorists. And it’s very obvious to most of them,” Carson said.
As for defeating ISIS, he repeated his calls for removing their oil revenue and their ability to move money.
“I would certainly like to see all of the countries in the region focus more on the global radical jihadist movement. If everybody could focus more attention on them and do everything that we can, including exclude their ability to move money, remove their ability to receive revenues from oil, take away the caliphate that they’ve established, and actually make sure that we eliminate any safe havens for them, I think a lot of the problems would be resolved, quite frankly.”
Late Saturday, Carson took to Facebook to reflect on his trip to Jordan. He wrote, “In the coming days I will offer what I believe are real solutions to the problems created in part by the Obama-Clinton Administration’s failed policies.”
He didn’t offer a lot of new specifics on “Meet the Press,” but he did seem to admit there are tactics America has used that appear to be working in the fight against ISIS. He specifically pointed to the effectiveness of U.S. Special Operations forces working with the Kurds in Iraq in conjunction with air strikes.
“That’s a model that works. And that can be applied to other places, you know. Why reinvent the wheel? Just take the things that work,” Carson said.
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com
Shawna Thomas
Shawna is a Senior Producer of "Meet the Press" and also works on expanding the show to multiple NBC News and social media platforms. Before that she was one of NBC News' White House producers, reported on Congress and helped plan NBC's coverage of the 2008 presidential election. She has a degree in political communication from the George Washington University and a graduate degree in journalism from the University of Southern California.