Carson’s campaign posted a vertically-shot smartphone video of the candidate sounding totally amped while on the plane to Las Vegas for tonight’s Republican primary debate. Carson, with his trademark enthusiasm, says, “It should be fun. I sure hope we’re going to get a lot of questions about foreign affairs and national defense. If so? Slam dunk.”
Slam dunk. What does he mean by that? Maybe Carson is trying to get into Jeb Bush’s head, recalling George W. Bush’s greatest foreign policy failure by dropping a subtle reference to the time CIA director George Tenet infamously exclaimed that intelligence about WMD in Iraq was a “slam dunk.” Or maybe Carson’s comment goes deeper than that, more of a best-and-brightest dig—a reminder that even political officials with traditional qualifications can make terrible mistakes. Or maybe it is even deeper still, a meditation on the nature of truth and the impossibility of certainty.
Haha just kidding, Ben Carson probably hasn’t read about all that Iraq stuff. Maybe he learned how to pronounce Hamas.