Carson’s Newest Eyebrow-Raising Comment: ‘Covert Division’ Of Government Employees

Republican presidential candidate and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson speaks at Manchester Community College, Sunday, May 10, 2015, in Manchester, N.H. (AP Photo/Mary Schwalm)
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If he’s elected president, Republican 2016 presidential Ben Carson said he might set up a “covert division” of government employees to monitor coworkers in order to make government more efficient.

In Iowa on Wednesday, according to MSNBC, Carson said he was “thinking very seriously” about creating “a covert division of people who look like the people in this room, who monitor what government people do.”

Employees would work harder if they believed some of their coworkers were secretly spying on them, he added.

“And we make it possible to fire government people,” the former neurosurgeon said, sparking cheers from the crowd of Iowa Republican voters.

The comment is the latest in a string of recent unusual or controversial comments he’s made. Carson, in the past, has compared Obamacare to slavery, said legalizing gay marriage could open the floodgates to all other types of unions, and even likened President Barack Obama and liberals to Nazi sympathizers.

Nevertheless, he’s still polling somewhat competitively in the 2016 GOP field. A recent national Republican primary poll conducted by Fox News found Carson trailing only former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) among the large GOP primary field.

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