Ben Carson is still baffled by the world.
During the foreign policy section of Thursday's Fox News debate in Iowa, the retired neurosurgeon answered a hypothetical question about Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty by revealing, “Putin is a one-horse country.”
On stage in Des Moines four days before the Iowa caucuses, Carson was asked what he would do as president if Russia invaded the NATO country of Estonia?
It's the foreign policy section, Ben...
Musing as though crib notes were written on the insides of his eyelids, the candidate decried Putin as “an opportunist" and "a bully," noting how he would "face him down in that whole region, the whole Baltic region.”
Putin... he really is a one-horse country
“I think we need to put in some armored brigades there," he added. "We only have one or two. We need much more than that. We need to be doing military exercises in not only Estonia but Latvia and Lithuania. They’re terrified by the saber-rattling."
Overlooking the fact Ukraine is not a NATO member, the doctor ploughed on: "I think we ought to put in our missile-defense system. I think we ought to give Ukraine offensive weapons, and I think we ought to fight them on an economic basis, because Putin is a one-horse country — oil and energy."
The Fox News moderators listened on...
Even the debate moderators were smirking by this point. Still, Carson wasn’t done: “And we ought to fight them on that level. We ought to be helping in terms of the technology for fracking, keeping the price low, quite frankly, because that’s what’s keeping him contained.”
The candidate eventually brought his remarks to a close by declaring war on Russia: “So, uh, yes I absolutely would go in if he attacked. I think under Article V of NATO, we would definitely protect all of our allies.”
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